Fanny and George were living with their guardian, Richard Abbey. Tom may have been with them or at Enfield School. As the eldest, Keats felt his responsibility (ll. 19–20).

3 ‘mind’s eye’ quoted from Hamlet I. 2. 185.

ODE TO APOLLO

Written February 1815. Published 1848. An announcement of Keats’s early pre-occupation with the grandeur of poetry, and of the attraction held for him by Apollo (see Jack, pp. 176–90, and W. Evert, Aesthetic and Myth in the Poetry of Keats, 1965, pp. 23–87). The ‘Ode’ is influenced by earlier ones, particularly Gray’s Progress of Poesy (1757).

5 adamantine diamond. Keats characteristically fuses the connotations of hardness and brilliance.

7 nervous sinewy, muscular.

14 Maro Virgil’s name for Publius Virgilius Maro.

33 See Spenser, The Faerie Queene III.

34 Aeolian lyre a wind-harp, a stringed instrument hung so that it vibrated with the movement of the air: a favourite symbol of inspiration among Romantic poets.

42 Nine the Nine Muses.

LINES WRITTEN ON 29 MAY, THE ANNIVERSARY OF THE RESTORATION OF CHARLES THE 2ND

Written 29 May 1815. Published Lowell. Written during the Hundred Days following Napoleon’s escape from Elba. Louis XVIII sought asylum in England, and was met by huge crowds. On 29 May bells were rung all over England to commemorate Charles II’s restoration. Keats approved of neither reaction, taking a liberal stance: legitimacy alone was not sufficient. For Hazlitt, Waterloo was ‘the sacred triumph of kings over mankind’. Text from W3 (Texts, pp. 93–4).

1 will] G (from W3), Allott; while Lowell.

4 when ] Texts (p. 94); while Lowell, G, Allott.

5 Algernon Sidney (1622–83), Lord William Russell (1639–83), and Sir Henry Vane (1613–62) were all executed for treason against Charles II. They were regarded as heroes by the Whigs.

TO SOME LADIES

Probably written summer 1815. Published 1817. Sent to Misses Anne and Caroline Mathew, when they were staying at Hastings with their cousin, George Felton Mathew. Mathew attempted to write poetry himself, and occupied an important place as a friend and admirer of Keats in 1815. The taste of Mathew and his cousins for sentiment and the jingling quatrains of Thomas Moore had a short-lived influence on Keats’s work (see the next six poems and To George Felton Mathew).

6 muse] G (from MS), Allott; rove 1817.

8 Its] 1817; In MS.

20 Tighe Mary Tighe (1772–1810), popular Irish poetess, whose Psyche (1805), a six-canto poem in Spenserian stanzas, was admired by Moore. For a somewhat too eager account of her influence on Keats, see E. V. Weller, Keats and Mary Tighe (1928).

ON RECEIVING A CURIOUS SHELL AND A COPY OF VERSES, FROM THE SAME LADIES

Written summer 1815.