grey-haired Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
and figure after figure in the same sculptured stillness, may this not have been due to the fact that his genius fed so largely on the arts?
Keats, however, was the poet of trance, even apart from his stay in the trance-world of the artists. One of his characteristic moods was an ecstatic indolence, like that of a man who has tasted an enchanted herb. He was a poet, indeed, whose soul escaped in song as on the drowsy wings of a dream. He may be said to have turned from the fever of life to the intoxication of poetry. He loved poetry—“my demon poesy”—as a thing in itself, as, perhaps, no other poet equally great has done. This was his quest: this was his Paradise. He prayed, indeed:
That I may die a death
Of luxury, and my young spirit follow
The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo
Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear
The o’erwhelming sweets, ’twill bring me to the fair
Visions of all places: a bowery nook