nzas especially are unequal to the rest, as is again the third
from the end, 'Young Stranger,' which for its matter would with more
propriety have been cast into the previous section; and these
impoverish the effect, and contain expressions which might put some
readers off. If they would begin at the fifth stanza and omit the
third from the end, they would find little that is not admirable."

Now, for my part, when in book or newspaper I come upon references to
Isaiah lxi. 1-3, or Shakespeare, K. Henry IV., Pt. ii., Act 4, Sc. 5, l.
163, or the like, I have to drop my reading at once and hunt them up.
So I hope that these references of Mr. Bridges will induce the reader to
take his Keats down from the shelf. And I hope further that, having his
Keats in hand, the reader will examine these odes again and make out an
order for himself, as I propose to do.

Mr. Bridges's order of merit was: (1) 'Autumn,' (2) the 'Nightingale,'
(3) 'Melancholy,' (4) 'Psyche,' (5) 'Grecian Urn,' (6) 'Indolence';
leaving us to rank with these (a) the fragment of the 'May Ode,' and
(b) (c) the Odes to 'Pan' and to 'Sorrow' from 'Endymion.'

Now of 'Autumn,' to which he gives the first place 'for its perfection,'
one may remark that Keats did not entitle it an Ode, and the omission may
be something more than casual. Certainly its three stanzas seem to me to
exhibit very little of that _progression_ of thought and feeling which I
take to be one of the qualities of an ode as distinguished from an
ordinary lyric. The line is notoriously hard to draw: but I suppose that
in theory the lyric deals summarily with its theme, whereas the ode treats
it in a sustained progressive manner. But sustained treatment is hardly
possible within the limits of three stanzas, and I can discover no
progression. The first two stanzas elaborate a picture of Autumn; the
third suggests a reflection--

"Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too--"

And promptly, with a few added strokes, all pictorial, the poet works that
reflection into decoration. A sonnet could not well be more summary.
In fact, the poem in structure of thought very closely resembles a sonnet;
its first two stanzas corresponding to the octave, and its last stanza to
the sestett.

This will perhaps be thought very trivial criticism of a poem which most
people admit to be, as a piece of writing, all but a