Saving when, with freshening lave,
Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
Like twin water lilies, born
In the coolness of the morn
O, if thou hadst breathed then,
Now the Muses had been ten.
Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
At last for ever, evermore,
Will I call the Graces four."
Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),
"Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
Of Lady _Cytherea_."
So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself.
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