Parnes will offer no false hopes. Plunging into a hollow, he suddenly meets with Pan, the god of the woodland, wild man above, and goat below, striking terror at the first glance, yet showing in the end a rough kindliness of heart. The promise of protection follows, and Pan offers a handful of fennel, the herb after which the field of Marathon was named, to indicate the place of the coming victory. For Pheidippides himself Pan promises-but the runner does not say, save that it is reward enough. When pressed to tell by Miltiades, the Greek commander, Pheidippides tells the words of the god, but puts his own modest interpretation on them.

Soon after was fought the battle of Marathon (B.c. 490), in which Miltiades inflicted a telling defeat on the Persian army. But the battle was at the seashore, some twenty miles to the northeast of Athens, and a courier was needed to carry news of the victory to the anxious citizens at the Capital. Again Pheidippides was called on, and again he answered the call, earning thus the heroic release that had been promised by the friendly god.

66

In connection with this poem it is interesting to note that in the modern Olympian games the most important contest is the long-distance run called the "Marathon race," and that when in recent years the games were revived, in Athens itself, the race was over the very course traversed by Pheidippides in Browning's story.

LONGER NARRATIVE POEMS

THE EVE OF ST. AGNES
(Page 87)

This poem was begun early in 1819, and underwent considerable revision before being published the next year. Keats, in a letter to his brother, dated February 14th, 1819, speaks of being on a visit in Hampshire when he "took down some thin paper, and wrote on it a little poem called St. Agnes's Eve."

The Feast of St. Agnes comes on the 21st of January, and the Eve, of course, on the preceding night. Regarding the traditions connected with the occasion we quote a passage

from Leigh Hunt: "St. Agnes was a Roman virgin, who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian. Her parents, a few days after her decease, are said to have had a vision of her, surrounded by angels, and attended by a white lamb, which afterwards became sacred to her. In the Catholic church formerly the nuns used to bring a couple of lambs to her altar during mass. The superstition is (for we believe it is still to be found) that by taking certain measures of divination, damsels may get a sight of their future husbands in a dream. The ordinary process seems to have been by fasting."

The qualities that delight us in the best of Keats's poetry, perhaps most of all in this poem, are phrased perfectly by F. T. Palgrave, in the opening words to the preface of his volume of selections: Copiousness in exquisite detail, perpetual freshness of phrase." The truth of this characterization comes to us when we find that our chief pleasure in the poem is not in following its narrative part, itself a slight but perfect thing, but in pausing over the descriptive scenes, with their rich suggestions to the senses and imagination. If we read some of the descriptions from Spenser's Faerie Queene, from which Keats borrowed his stanza form, we see some of the shaping influences that brought forth this poem. From Spenser is the sensuous melody of line, and the love of the antique word,-gossip, cates, amort. But the final perfectness belongs to Keats himself-his fertile mind rich in sumptuous imagery, his critical sense feeling with laborious care and delicate sensitiveness for the one happy phrase to express it best.

Of all the features of Keats's diction, there is space here to mention only one,-the condensed, suggestive phrase in which a word changes its normal part of speech, to stand in a new relation with other words. Such, in stanza VII, is the phrasing in the line

Came many a tiptoe, amorous cavalier,

66

or, in stanza XIII, “the little moonlight room." The description of Angela in stanza XVIII as a palsy-stricken, churchyard thing" is another out of many examples we might find, typical of the way in which poetry, absorbed with the inner heart of things, makes rule-bound language flexible, to serve her ends.

But it is not alone in the exquisite phrase or glowing im

age that the artistic value of the poem lies. We find it too in the structure, one feature of which is worth special notice. The story is one of passion, the warm love of youth, and in harmony with this are the richly colored descriptions of the dance, of Madeline's chamber, of the banquet set forth in the moonlight. But at the very beginning of the poem, and at its end, framing the story of warm, romantic love, is the picture of the ancient beadsman, in the cold night without, living the end of his lonely, loveless existence. From the first stanza the interest shifts gradually to the scene of indoor revelry, and when the romantic story is done, we revert once more to the old beadsman, who has ended at last his cheerless life, among the cold ashes without.

Stanza I. We notice how the effect of chill is given, not alone in the images suggested to the imagination, but in the very sound of the words, particularly in the rime-words cold, fold, told, old. The most notable example of this is in Milton's sonnet On the Late Massacre in Piedmont.

Stanza II. It does not do to try to get at the meaning of such a line as the sixth in this stanza by too close an analysis: we get the feeling at once, and that is the chief thing.

Stanza III. Leigh Hunt writes, of the third line: "This 'flattered' is exquisite. . . . Yes, the poor old man was moved, by the sweet music, to think that so sweet a thing was intended for his comfort as well as for others. . . . .. But it was not to be. We must, therefore, console ourselves with knowing, that this icy endurance of his was the last, and that he soon found himself at the sunny gate of heaven."

Stanza VIII. “The use of the old word amort is peculiarly happy: it is more expressive of deadened perception than any other single word, and is full of poetic associations." Forman's note.

For the allusion in lambs unshorn, see note to stanza XIII. Stanza XII. Gossip, according to older usage, often meant a neighborly old woman.

Stanza XIII. "St. Agnes' wool is that shorn from two lambs which (allusive to the Saint's name), were upon that day brought to Mass, and offered while the Agnus was chanted. The wool was then spun, dressed, and woven by the hand of Nuns." Palgrave's note.

Stanza XIX. Forman explains the last lines as follows: "The monstrous debt was his monstrous existence, which he owed to a demon and repaid when he died or disappeared through the working of one of his own spells by Viviane."

Stanza XXII. "Rose, like a missioned spirit, unaware." This exquisite line reached its final form only after repeated blotting. The manuscript shows that Keats wrote it so after trying the effect of the following phrases: "like an affrighted Bird," "like an affrighted Swan," "Rose like a spirit to her unaware."

Stanza XXIV. Forman's note on this famous stanza begins: "This sumptuous passage occupied the poet's care very considerably." The editor then gives exhaustively the history of the earlier forms of the stanza, showing how laboriously genius works in attaining its most perfect results. A lover of poetry would find much interest in reading all the notes upon the poem in this editor's scholarly work.

Stanza XXV. "Gules: a heraldic term for red:-transmitted here through the coat-of-arms in the casement.” Palgrave's note.

Stanza XXVII. Leigh Hunt explains the line as follows: "Clasped like a missal in a land of Pagans: that is to say, where Christian prayer-books must not be seen, and are, therefore, doubly cherished for the danger."

Stanza XXX. Soother seems used here for smoother.

Stanza XXXVI. The suggestion of the frost-wind and the sleet reminds us again of the cold night without, and prepares us for the return to it in the last stanza.

Stanza XL. Leigh Hunt remarks, regarding the last line: "This is a slip of the memory, for there were hardly carpets in those days. But the truth of the painting makes amends, as in the unchronological pictures of old masters."

Stanza XLII. We note that the last word repeats the same rime tone that was so impressively used in the first stanza.

THE ANCIENT MARINER
(Page 100)

The interesting circumstances under which the poem was written, soon after the friendship between Coleridge and Wordsworth was established in their early manhood, can best be told in the words of the latter. "In reference to this poem I will here mention one of the most noticeable facts in my own poetic history and that of Mr. Coleridge. In the autumn of 1797, he, my sister, and myself started from Alfoxden pretty late in the afternoon, with a view to visit Lintoun and the Valley of Stones near to it; and as our

united funds were very small, we agreed to defray the expense of the tour by writing a poem to be sent to the New Monthly Magazine set up by Phillips the bookseller, and edited by Dr. Aiken. Accordingly, we set off, and proceeded along the Quantock Hills toward Watchet, and in the course of this walk was planned the poem of The Ancient Mariner, founded on a dream, as Mr. Coleridge said, of his friend Mr. Cruikshank. Much the greatest part of the story was Mr. Coleridge's invention; but certain parts I suggested. . . . We began the composition together, on that to me memorable evening; I furnished two or three lines at the beginning of the poem, in particular:

And listens like a three years' child:
The Mariner hath his will.

These trifling contributions, all but one, which Mr. C. has with unnecessary scrupulosity recorded, slipped out of his mind, as well they might. As we endeavored to proceed conjointly (I speak of the same evening), our respective manners proved so widely different that it would have been quite presumptuous in me to do anything but separate from an undertaking upon which I could only have been a clog."

The poem grew under Coleridge's hands, and was not completed till several months later, when it was published, not in the magazine, as originally planned, but, together with certain poems of Wordsworth's, in the famous volume entitled Lyrical Ballads, 1798. The marginal gloss, that plays with fine imaginative force over the progress of the story, was an after-thought, and did not appear till a later edition of the poem.

The first reading of The Ancient Mariner gives an immediate sense of vivid imaginative power. It is likely, however, that in this first reading much will escape us that a closer reading would reveal. The details are fused into an effect singularly delicate and harmonious, yet the examination of these details enhances, rather than detracts from, that single impression, mysterious and haunting.

As foundation for the whole poem there is the story itself, conceived as a literal statement of definite happenings. These are stated so that we can follow them with accuracy if we take the pains. As the ship leaves the harbor, the dropping from sight first of the kirk, then of the hill, finally of the lighthouse top, gives a condensed picture of a North