Like Scott and Byron, Keats wrote metrical romances. One of these, Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, is founded upon a tale of Boccaccio, that old master to whom so many poets have gone for inspiration. In Keats's romances there is no war-cry, no clash of swords as in Scott's, and the luxury is altogether different from Byron's. There is in them that trembling sense of beauty which opens to us wide windows into fairyland. They are simple stories veiled in the glamour of lovely words, and full of the rich color and the magic of the middle ages. But here as elsewhere in Keats's poetry what we lack is the touch of human sorrow. Keats wrote of nature with all Wordsworth's insight and truth, and with greater magic of words. He understood the mystery of nature, but of the mystery of the heart of man it was not his to sing. He lived in a world apart. The terror and beauty of real life hardly touched him. Alone of all the poets of his day he was unmoved by the French Revolution, and all that it stood for.

Some day you will read Keats's metrical romances, and now I will give you a few verses from some of his odes, for in his odes we have Keats's poetry at its very best. Here are some verses from his ode On a Grecian Urn. You have seen such a vase, perhaps, with beautiful sculptured figures on it, dancing maidens and piping shepherds.

In these last lines we have the dominant note in Keats's song, beauty and the love of beauty. What is true must be beautiful, and just in so far as we move away from truth we lose what is beautiful. Nothing is so ugly as a lie.

And now remembering how Shelley sang of the skylark you will like to read how his brother poet sang of the nightingale.

As another poet has said, speaking of Keats's odes, "Greater lyrical poetry the world may have seen than any that is in these; lovelier it surely has never seen, nor ever can it possibly see."

Hyperion, which also ranks among Keats's great poems, is an unfinished epic. In a far-off way the subject of the poem reminds us of Paradise Lost. For here Keats sings of the overthrow of the Titans, or earlier Greek gods, by the Olympians, or later Greek gods, and in the majestic flow of the blank verse we sometimes seem to hear an echo of Milton.

Hyperion, who gives his name to the poem, was the Sun-god who was dethroned by Apollo. When the poem opens we see the old god Saturn already fallen—

Saturn is king no more. Fate willed it so. But suddenly he rises and in helpless passion cries out against Fate—

The volume containing these and other poems was published in 1820, little more than three years after Keats's first volume, and never, perhaps, has poet made such strides in so short a time. And this last book was kindly received. Success had come to Keats, but young though he still was, the success was too late. For soon it was seen that his health had gone and that his life's work was done. As a last hope his friends advised him to spend the winter in Italy. So with a friend he set out. He never returned, but died in Rome in the arms of his friend on the 23rd February 1821. He was only twenty-six. Before he died he asked that on his grave should be placed the words, "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." He had his wish: but we, to whom he left his poetry, know that his name is written in the stars.

How Shelley mourned for him you have read. How the friends who knew and loved him mourned we learn from what they say of him. "I cannot afford to lose him," wrote one. "If I know what it is to love, I truly love John Keats." Another says, "He was the most unselfish of human creatures," and still another, "a sweeter tempered man I never knew."

In a letter which reached Rome too late was this message for Keats, "Tell that great poet and noble-hearted man that we shall all bear his memory in the most precious parts of our hearts, and that the world shall bow their heads to it, as our loves do."

We bow our heads to his memory and say farewell to him in these words of his own fairy song—