A Day with Keats. Byron May Clarissa Gillington

      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 heapèd 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…

      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 – whom he does not know in the original, but who, through the poor medium of translation, has filled his soul with Grecian fantasies.