'for its perfection'--to
'Autumn':--

"This is always reckoned among the faultless masterpieces of English
poetry; and unless it be objected as a slight blemish that the words
'Think not of them' in the second line of the third stanza are
somewhat awkwardly addressed to a personification of Autumn, I do not
know that any sort of fault can be found in it."

But though 'Autumn' (1) is best as a whole, the 'Nightingale' (2)
altogether beats it in splendour and intensity of mood; and, after
pointing out its defects, Mr. Bridges confesses, "I could not name any
English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty as this
ode." Still, it takes second place, and next comes 'Melancholy' (3).
"The perception in this ode is profound, and no doubt experienced;" but in
spite of its great beauty "it does not hit so hard as one would expect.
I do not know whether this is due to a false note towards the end of the
second stanza, or to a disagreement between the second and third stanzas."
Next in order come 'Psyche' (4) and, disputing place with it, the
'Grecian Urn' (5). 'Indolence' (6) closes the procession; and I dare say
few will dispute her title to the last place.

But with these six odes we must rank (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,'
immortal on account of the famous passage of inimitable beauty descriptive
of the Greek poets--

"'Leaving great verse unto a little clan.'"--

And (b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.' Of the
latter Mr. Sidney Colvin has written:--

"His later and more famous lyrics, though they are free from the
faults and immaturities which disfigure this, yet do not, to my mind
at least, show a command over such various sources of imaginative and
musical effect, or touch so thrillingly so many chords of the spirit.
A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos like that of the best
Elizabethan love-songs; a sense as keen as Heine's of the immemorial
romance of India and the East; a power like that of Coleridge, and
perhaps caught from him, of evoking the remotest weird and beautiful
associations almost with a word; clear visions of Greek beauty and
wild wood-notes of Celtic imagination; all these elements come here
commingled, yet in a strain perfectly individual."

With this Mr. Bridges entirely agrees; but adds:--

"It unfortunately halts in the opening, and the first and fourth
sta