—I have saved the chief thing to the last. I have spoken of the six fortunate ones who had money; I have not spoken of thee, oh my poor, poor Keats! The hours that I have hungered with thee, the hours that I have wept with thee, oh thou my poet, oh thou my Keats! Oh thou most wretched, most miserable of poets, oh thou most beautiful, most exquisite, most unthinkable of poets! Most inspired poet of England, since Milton died!—It was given to others to be beautiful, it was given to thee alone to be perfect! It was given to thee to be ecstasy incarnate, to be melody too sweet to hear! It was given to thee, alone of all poets, to achieve by mere language a rapture that thrills the soul like the sound of an organ. And they mocked thee, they spit upon thee, they cursed thee, oh my poor, poor Keats! Thou, the hostler's son—thou, the apothecary's clerk! Thou, sick and starved and helpless—thou, dying of disease and neglect and despair:
Oh for a draft of vintage! That hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
Oh for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim!
“Go back to thy gallipots, Mr. Keats!” Think not of Gifford—poor fool—but think of yourself, oh world! Think what you lost in that man! You killed him, yes, you trampled him, and you throttled him! And he was only twenty-five! And he had never finished Hyperion—because he had not the heart!
—Come, now, all you who love books, come quickly, and let us take up a subscription, that we may save for men the rest of Hyperion!
Lost Echo sits amid the voiceless mountains,
And feeds her grief with his remembered lay!
I have been sitting here from seven in the evening until three in the morning, and I can not write any more.
Only—think about this thing. Look up the facts and see if they are not true. These seven men made England's poetry for a century; they made England's thought for a century—they make it to-day! They are the inspiration of whole peoples, the sources of multitudes of noble deeds and purposes. What do you think in money would be represented by the value of these books alone? Enough to support ten thousand poets for a lifetime, do you think? And how many hundreds of thousands of students are hearing about them this day? How many young men and maidens are going out into the world owing all that they have that is beautiful to them? And all these authors of the day, all these critics and teachers, novelists and poets—how much of what they have that is true do they not owe to these men? Go ask them, go ask them!