John Keats

Lines On Seeing A Lock Of Milton's Hair

Chief of organic Numbers! Old Scholar of the Spheres! Thy spirit never slumbers, But rolls about our ears For ever and for ever. O, what a mad endeavour Worketh he Who, to thy sacred and ennobled hearse, Would offer a burnt sacrifice of verse And Melody! How heavenward thou soundedst Live Temple of sweet noise; And discord unconfoundedst: Giving delight new joys, And Pleasure nobler pinions-- O where are thy Dominions! Lend thine ear To a young delian oath--aye, by thy soul, By all that from thy mortal Lips did roll; And by the Kernel of thine earthly Love, Beauty, in things on earth and things above, When every childish fashion Has vanish'd from my rhyme Will I grey-gone in passion Give to an after-time Hymning and harmony Of thee, and of thy Words and of thy Life: But vain is now the bruning and the strife-- Pangs are in vain -- until I grow high-rife With Old Philosophy And mad with glimpses at futurity! For many years my offerings must be hush'd: When I do speak I'll think upon this hour, Because I feel my forehead hot and flush'd, Even at the simplest vassal of thy Power,-- A Lock of thy bright hair! Sudden it came, And I was startled when I heard thy name Coupled so unaware-- Yet, at the moment, temperate was my blood: Methought I had beheld it from the flood. 'In a letter to his friend Bailey, dated 23rd of January 1818 (Life, Letters &c. , 1848), Keats says -- "I was at Hunt's the other day, and he surprised me with a real authenticated lock of Milton's hair. I know you would like what I wrote thereon, so here it is -- as they say of a Sheep in a Nursery Book. " And after transcribing the poem he adds -- "This I did at Hunt's, at his request. Perhaps I should have done something better alone and at home. " In the folio Shakespeare in Sir Charles Dilke's possession these Lines are written in Keats's autograph, and there is another manuscript at the end of the copy of Endymion mentioned several times in these notes. The date given by Keats to the poem is the 21st of January 1818. I presume Lord Houghton gave the poem from the Bailey letter: the variations are inconsiderable. Medwin records in his Life of Shelley (Volume II, page 106) the belief that this poem had appeared in a periodical, though not at that time included in Keats's works. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.