e wealth of globed Peonies." We may "imprison our
mistress's soft hand, and gaze, deep, deep, within her peerless eyes."
We may brood, quieted and sweetly-sad, upon the last melancholy
"oozings" of the rich year's vintage. But across all these things lies,
like a streak of red, breath-catching, spilled heart's blood, the
knowledge of _what it means_ to have been able to turn all this into
poetry!

It means Torment. It means Despair. It means _that cry,_ out of the
dust of the cemetery at Rome, "O God! O God! has there ever been
such pain as my pain?"

I suppose Keats suffered more in his brief life than any mortal child
of the Muses. These ultimate creations of supreme Beauty are
evoked in no other way. Everything has to be sacrificed--everything--if
we are to be--like the gods, _creators of Life._ For Life is a thing
that can only be born in _that soil_--only planted where the wound
goes deepest--only watered when we strike where that fountain
flows! He wrote for himself. The crowd, the verdict of his friends--what
did all that matter? He wrote for himself; and for those who
dare to risk the taste of that wine, which turns the taste of all else to
a weary irrelevance!

One is unwilling to leave our Adonais, whose "annual wound in
Lebanon allures" us thus fatally, with nothing but such a bitter cry.
One has a pathetic human longing to think of him _as he was,_ in
those few moments of unalloyed pleasure the gods allowed him
before "consumption," and "that girl," poisoned the springs of his
life! And those moments, how they have passed into his poetry like
the breath of the Spring!

When "the grand obsession" was not upon him, who, like Keats, can
make us feel the cool, sweet, wholesome touch of our great Mother,
the Earth? That sleep, "full of sweet dreams and health and quiet
breathing," which the breast that suckled Persephone alone can give
may heal us also for a brief while.

We, too, on this very morning--listen reader!--may wreath "a
flowery band to bind us to the Earth, spite of despondence." Some
"shape of beauty may yet move away the pall from our dark spirits."
Even with old Saturn under his weight of grief, we may drink in the
loveliness of those "green-robed senators of mighty woods, tall oaks,
branch-charmed by the earnest stars." And in the worst of our moods
we can still call aloud to the things of beauty that pass not away. We
can even call out to them from her very side who is "the cause," "the
c