“The chief poems in the collection, taken from Boccaccio, were to have been associated with tales from the same source, intended to have been written by a friend; but illness on his part and distracting engagements on mine, prevented us from accomplishing our plan at the time; and Death now, to my deep sorrow, has frustrated it for ever!”
I cannot but quote what follows, the tribute to Keats’s kindness, to the most endearing quality our nature possesses; the quality that was Scott’s in such a winning degree, that was so marked in Molière,
“He, who is gone, was one of the very kindest friends I ever possessed, and yet he was not kinder, perhaps, to me than to others. His intense mind and powerful feeling would, I truly believe, have done the world some service had his life been spared—but he was of too sensitive a nature—and thus he was destroyed! One story he completed, and that is to me now the most pathetic poem in existence.”
It was “Isabella, or the Pot of Basil.”
The “Garden of Florence” is written in the couplets of “Endymion,” and is a beautiful version of the tale once more retold by Alfred de Musset in “Simone.” From “The Romance of Youth” let me quote one stanza, which applies to Keats:
“He read and dreamt of young Endymion,
Till his romantic fancy drank its fill;
He saw that lovely shepherd sitting lone,
Watching his white flocks upon Ida’s hill;
The Moon adored him—and when all was still,
And stars were wakeful—she would earthward stray,
And linger with her shepherd love, until
The hooves of the steeds that bear the car of day,
Struck silver light in the east, and then she waned away!”
It was on Latmos, not Ida, that Endymion shepherded his flocks; but that is of no moment, except to schoolmasters. There are other stanzas of Reynolds worthy of Keats; for example, this on the Fairy Queen:
“Her bodice was a pretty sight to see;
Ye who would know its colour,—be a thief
Of the rose’s muffled bud from off the tree;
And for your knowledge, strip it leaf by leaf
Spite of your own remorse or Flora’s grief,
Till ye have come unto its heart’s pale hue;
The last, last leaf, which is the queen,—the chief
Of beautiful dim blooms: ye shall not rue,
At sight of that sweet leaf the mischief which ye do.”
One does not know when to leave off gathering buds in the “Garden of Florence.” Even after Shakespeare, and after Keats, this passage on wild flowers has its own charm:
“We gathered wood flowers,—some blue as the vein
O’er Hero’s eyelid stealing, and some as white,
In the clustering grass, as rich Europa’s hand
Nested amid the curls on Jupiter’s forehead,
What time he snatched her through the startled waves;—
Some poppies, too, such as in Enna’s meadows
Forsook their own green homes and parent stalks,
To kiss the fingers of Proserpina:
And some were small as fairies’ eyes, and bright
As lovers’ tears!”