sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft.
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
_Autumn._

The voice of Charles Brown at the open window, hailing him cheerily,
breaks the spell; Keats goes in, and they sit down together to a simple
breakfast-table, and Brown "quizzes" Keats, as the current phrase goes,
on his inveterate abstractedness. The young man, with his sweet and
merry laugh, defends himself by producing the result of his last-night's
meditations, in praise of the selfsame wandering fancy.

Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth;
Then let winged Fancy wander
Through the thought still spread beyond her:
Open wide the mind's cage door,
She'll dart forth, and cloudward soar.
O, sweet Fancy! let her loose;
Summer's joys are spoilt by use,
And the enjoying of the Spring
Fades as does its blossoming:
Autumn's red-lipp'd fruitage too,
Blushing through the mist and dew,
Cloys with tasting: What do then?
Sit thee by the ingle, when
The sear faggot blazes bright,
Spirit of a winter's night;
When the soundless earth is muffled,
And the caked snow is shuffled
From the ploughboy's heavy shoon....
Fancy, high-commission'd:--send her!
She has vassals to attend her:
She will bring, in spite of frost,
Beauties that the earth hath lost;
She will bring thee, all together,
All delights of summer weather;
All the buds and bells of May,
From dewy sward or thorny spray;
All the heaped Autumn's wealth,
With a still, mysterious stealth:
She will mix these pleasures up,
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shalt quaff it....
_Fancy._

Breakfast over, the business of the day begins: and that, with Keats, is
poetry, and all that can foster poetic stimulus. He takes no real heed
of anything else. A devoted son and brother, one ready to sacrifice
himself and his slender resources to the uttermost farthing for his
mother, brothers, sister and friends--yet he has no vital interest in
other folks' affairs, nor in current events, nor in ordinary social
topics. Other people's poetry does not appeal to him, except that of
Shakespeare, and of Homer