those of the present:--

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth
Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,
Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways
Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,
Some shape of beauty moves away the pall
From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,
Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
With the green world they live in; and clear rills
That for themselves a cooling covert make
'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,
Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
We have imagined for the mighty dead;
All lovely tales that we have heard or read:
An endless fountain of immortal drink,
Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
Nor do we merely feel these essences
For one short hour; no, even as the trees
That whisper round a temple become soon
Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
The passion poesy, glories infinite,
Haunt us till they become a cheering light
Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast,
That, whether there be shine, or gloom o'ercast,
They alway must be with us, or we die.
_Endymion._

Yet John Keats is in some respects out of keeping with the magnificent
phraseology of which he is the mouthpiece. "Little Keats," as his fellow
medical students termed him, is a small, undersized man, not over five feet
high--the shoulders too broad, the legs too spare--"death in his hand,"
as Coleridge said, the slack moist hand of the incipient consumptive.
The only "thing of beauty" about him is his face. "It is a face," to
quote his friend Leigh Hunt, "in which energy and sensibility" (i.e.,
sensitiveness) "are remarkably mixed up--an eager power, wrecked and
made impatient by ill-health. Every feature at once strongly cut and
delicately alive." There is that femininity in the cast of his features,
which Coleridge classed as an attribute of true genius. His beautiful
brown hair falls loosely over those eyes, large, dark, glowing, which
appeal to all observers by their mystical illumin