Keats’s poem is probably a reply to Mathew’s verses To a poetical Friend, published in the European Magazine, LXX (1816), p. 365; further, see Murry (1930), pp. 1–6, and for Mathew’s comments on Keats’s epistle, see KC II, p.181, pp. 186–8. Several other of Keats’s early poems are connected with the Mathew family circle: see To Some Ladies, On Receiving a Curious Shell, ‘Stay, ruby-breasted warbler, stay’ and ‘Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain’.

5 brother Poets a reference to Beaumont and Fletcher according to Woodhouse (1817), p. 145.

17 far different cares Keats’s medical studies at Guy’s Hospital.

18 ‘Lydian airs’ quoted from Milton, L’Allegro 135–6.

24 rapt seraph see Pope, An Essay on Man (1733) 1, 78: ‘As the rapt Seraph that adores and burns’.

25–8 probably a reply to Mathew’s poem, where he had urged Keats not to let his medical studies turn him from the poetry, especially Wieland’s ‘strange tales of the elf and fay’, which they had appreciated together. For Keats’s interest in fairies and Wieland’s Oberon, see On Receiving a Curious Shell 25–30n (p. 561).

39 Druid for the pre-Romantics a symbol of the poet-priest.

40 blowing blooming (poeticism).

43 cassia not the ‘casia’ (cassia) of Virgil, Ovid, the Psalms and Milton, whose flowers were yellow or greenish-yellow (and whose bark provided a gentle laxative). Here Keats’s ‘cassia’ intertwines with itself and its flowers are white (as in Calidore 96). The woodbine or ‘Morning Glory’ is probably intended.

45 covert branches here contains the meaning ‘hidden branches’ as well as the idea of the branches making a ‘covert’, i.e. hiding-place – ‘Like a deer… to the covert doth himself betake’ (Drayton).

47 aloof the observer’s height makes him ‘aloof’ from the ‘violet beds’ nestling on the ground.

56 Chatterton see To Chatterton headnote (p. 559).

62–5 And mourn… world compare Keats’s letter of 9 June 1819, ‘One of the great reasons that the english have produced the finest writers in the world; is, that the English world has ill-treated them during their lives and foster’d them after their deaths’ (L II, p. 115).

67–9 Alfred… Tell… Wallace the liberal spirit, and the admiration for these national heroes, was encouraged by Cowden Clarke and by the Examiner: compare To Charles Cowden Clarke 70–71.

75 ‘a sun-shine in a shady place’ quoted from The Faerie Queene I. iii. 4.

77–8 Close… song that is, close to the Pierian spring, the inspiration of the Muses.

85–9 the metamorphoses here are inspired by Ovid.

TO [MARY FROGLEY]

Written 14 February 1816 as a valentine for George Keats to send to Mary Frogley, who was a cousin of Richard Woodhouse. Published, in an altered form, 1817 (for the changes, see S). According to Woodhouse, Keats wrote two other valentines on the same occasion. One may have been the sonnet, To – (‘Had I a man’s fair form’), possibly addressed to Mary Frogley or one of the Mathew sisters.

6 fane temple (poeticism), as in ‘Old Iona’s holy fane’ (Scott).

15 hellebore botanical name for a species of garden plant, here probably referring to the Christmas rose.

21 globes ‘i.e. of smoke’, Woodhouse (1817), p. 144.

29 little loves putti, or winged cherubs, common in Renaissance paintings. Echoes Spenser, Epithalamion, where the phrase ‘little winged loves’ is used (l. 357), and ll. 231–3, where angels ‘… forget their service and about her fly, / Oft peeping in her face that seems more fayre, / The more they on it stare.’ Cowden Clarke, p. 125, remarks, ‘How often, in after-times, have I heard him quote these lines.’

31 lave normally a verb meaning ‘bathe’ (poeticism). Here used as a noun. The OED gives only one example, and that after Keats, of this form.

33 compare Spenser; Epithalamion 176, ‘Her paps lyke lyllies budded’.

39–40 compare Spenser, The Shepheardes Calendar, April 112–13, ‘Wants not a fourth grace, to make the daunce even? / Let that rowme to my Lady be yeuen…’

48–58 Mary Frogley is pictured as Spenser’s chaste Britomartis, The Faerie Queene III. Compare On Receiving a Curious Shell 12.

55 vase Keats uses the eighteenth-century and early nineteenth-century pronunciation which rhymed with ‘face’. Compare Byron, Don Juan VI, 97.

57 alabaster white (figurative).

60 northern lights the Aurora Borealis.

TO – (‘Had I a man’s fair form, then might my sighs’)

Probably written c. 14 February 1816 as a valentine. See note to preceding poem.