of courage and manliness,"
this habit of despair is growing upon him, and eating his energy away. A
wintry chill settles down upon the May-time, and his misery finds vent
in lovely lines--

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them,
With a sleety whistle through them;
Nor frozen thawings glue them
From budding at the prime.

In a drear-nighted December,
Too happy, happy brook,
Thy bubblings ne'er remember
Apollo's summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting,
They stay their crystal fretting,
Never, never petting
About the frozen time.

Ah! would 'twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh'd not at passed joy?
To know the change and feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steal it,
Was never said in rhyme.

[Illustration]

[_Painting by W. J. Neatby._ ENDYMION.

As she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame,
... In her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love.]

Yet Keats is young, and youth means buoyancy. With an effort--increasingly
difficult--he is able to shake off this sombre fit for awhile; and he
makes use of the simplest means to that end. "Whenever I feel vapourish,"
he has said, "I rouse myself, wash, and put on a clean shirt; brush my
hair and clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and in fact adonize as if
I were going out: then, all clean and comfortable, I sit down to write."
These very prosaic methods adopted, he abandons himself to the full
flood of inspiration, and lets his mind suffuse itself in antique glory.
As Endymion, he receives the divine commands of the passionately bright
Moon-Lady, as she stoops at last to bless him.

And as she spake, into her face there came
Light, as reflected from a silver flame:
Her long black hair swelled ample, in display
Full golden: in her eyes a brighter day
Dawn'd blue and full of love.
_Endymion._

Or, as Lycius, he succumbs to the serpentine grace of Lamia; or as
Porphyro, hidden in the silence, watches Madeline at prayer.

A casement high and triple-arch'd there was,
All garlanded with carven imageries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot grass,