John Keats

Spenserian Stanzas On Charles Armitage Brown

I. He is to weet a melancholy carle: Thin in the waist, with bushy head of hair, As hath the seeded thistle when in parle It holds the Zephyr, ere it sendeth fair Its light balloons into the summer air; Therto his beard had not begun to bloom, No brush had touch'd his chin or razor sheer; No care had touch'd his cheek with mortal doom, But new he was, and bright, as scarf from Persian loom. II. Ne cared he for wine, or half-and-half; Ne cared he for fish or flesh, or fowl; And sauces held he worthless as the chaff; He 'sdeigned the swine-head at the wassail-bowl; Ne with lewd ribbalds sat he cheek by jowl; Ne with sly Lemans in the scorner's chair; But after water-brooks this Pilgrim's soul Panted, and all his food was woodland air; Though he would oft-times feast on gilliflowers rare. III. The slang of cities in no wise he knew, Tipping the wink to him was heathen Greek; He sipp'd no "olden Tom," or "ruin blue," Or Nantz, or cherry-brandy, drank full meek By many a damsel brave, and rouge of cheek; Nor did he know each aged watchman's beat, Nor in obscured purlieus would he seek For curled Jewesses, with ankles neat, Who as they walk abroad, make tinkling with their feet. 'It is a brusque transition from the fervour and preternatural beauty of the dream sonnet to these amusing stanzas on Brown; but under the same date as that on which Keats told his brother of the dream, namely the 15th of April 1819, he records that "Brown, this morning, is writing some Spenserian stanzas against" Miss Brawne and the poet; "so," says the poet, "I shall amuse myself with him a little, in the manner of Spenser. " It would not be fair to assume that all here is ironical; but the first stanza suggests that Keats's estimable friend was a "jolly" man, bald-headed, and "a trifle wider in the waist than formerly;" while, generally, one would suppose him to have been alive to the good things of the world. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.