[1] The lines I mean are—
| This canopy mark: ’tis the work of a fay; Beneath its rich shade did King Oberon languish, When lovely Titania was far, far away, And cruelly left him to sorrow, and anguish. |
Shakespeare’s hint for his Oberon and Titania was taken, as is well known, from the French prose romance Huon of Bordeaux translated by Lord Berners. The plot of Wieland’s celebrated poem is founded entirely on the same romance. With its high-spiced blend of the marvellous and the voluptuous, the cynically gay and the heavily moral and pathetic, it had a considerable vogue in Sotheby’s translation (published 1798) and played a part in the English romantic movement of the time. There are several passages in Keats, notably in The Cap and Bells, where I seem to catch a strain reminiscent of this Oberon, and one instance where a definite phrase from it seems to have lingered subconsciously in his memory and been turned to gold, thus:—
| Oft in this speechless language, glance on glance, When mute the tongue, how voluble the heart! |
Oberon, c. vi, st. 17.
| No utter’d syllable, or woe betide! But to her heart her heart was voluble. |
The Eve of St Agnes, st. 23.
[2] March 1816 according to Woodhouse.
[3] The Prelude, book v.