skylark's song." It was written in Italy in 1820. Mrs. Shelley, in a note on the poems written at this time, says: "It was on a beautiful summer evening, while wandering among the lanes whose myrtle-hedges were the bowers of the fireflies, that we heard the carolling of the skylark which inspired one of the most beautiful of his poems."

LINES 1-2. The keynote of the poem is struck in the opening lines. It is not so much an actual skylark that Shelley is addressing as the spirit of superhuman music that made its presence felt in the skylark's song.

15. Like an unbodied joy, like a happy spirit just set free from the prison of the body.

22. that silver sphere, the morning star.

48. unbeholden, unseen. The glowworm itself is hidden among the flowers and grass, although at times its light flashes out.

55. heavy-winged thieves, the winds, laden with the perfume of the

rose.

66. Chorus Hymeneal, a wedding song. Hymen is the god of marriage. 71. fountains, sources.

76. joyance, gayety, enjoyment.

95. Even if a man could forget his human passions and sorrows, Shelley thinks, he could not reach the pure joy of the skylark's song.

THE INDIAN SERENADE

This "divine little poem," as Browning called it, was written by Shelley in 1818 or 1819. During the last years of his life, Mrs. Williams, the wife of Lieutenant Williams, who was drowned with Shelley, used to sing it to an air which she had brought from India. A manuscript copy showing several changes from the form in which it was first printed was found in the volume of Keats recovered from Shelley's dead body.

LINE II. champak, a sacred Indian tree, bearing golden-yellow, highly fragrant flowers.

LOVE'S PHILOSOPHY

Most of Shelley's lyrics remind us of his own line in To a Skylark,Our sweetest songs are those that tell of saddest thought.

But this little poem shows him in his brightest and sunniest mood.

JOHN KEATS

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

LINE 1. Keats was at this time mourning the death of his brother, who had died of consumption a few months before the poem was written. His own health, also, was failing, and he followed his brother to the grave in about two years.

4. Lethe-wards, towards Lethe, which was, in ancient mythology, one of the rivers of Hades. It was said that whoever drank of its waters forgot the past.

7. Dryad. The Dryads were nymphs who were supposed to dwell in trees and to watch over them. Keats speaks of the nightingale as if it

were one of these nymphs.

13. Flora, the goddess of flowers in ancient mythology.

14. Provençal. Provence is a district in southern France. It is a land of wines and flowers and song, and noted for its outdoor merrymaking.

sun-burnt mirth, mirth in the open air.

16. Hippocrene, one of the fountains of the Muses on Mount Helicon in Greece. Here it stands for wine.

31. Away! away! The poet puts aside wine as well as melancholy, and says he will go, in imagination, to the haunts of the nightingale, and there seek solace from the "fever" and "fret" of life.

32. Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards. In ancient mythology the chariot of Bacchus, the god of wine, was spoken of as drawn by leopards.

51. Darkling, in the dark.

66. Ruth. See the Book of Ruth in the Old Testament.

67. In the "alien" or foreign country to which Ruth went she gleaned wheat and barley (both of which are called corn in all European countries) in the fields of Boaz.

ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER

LINE 1. the realms of gold, the fields of poetry and romance. 4. Apollo, the god of music and poetry in ancient mythology.

6. demesne, domain, territory.

7. serene. This word is here used as a noun. It means clearness and calmness

8. Chapman, a poet and dramatist of Shakespeare's time who translated Homer.

10. ken, sight, vision.

II. Cortez.

Pacific.

It was really Balboa, and not Cortez, who discovered the

14. Darien, a district of Colombia, South America. It is a part of the isthmus which connects North and South America.

ON THE GRASSHOPPER AND CRICKET

Keats's intense love of nature shows itself on almost every page of his poetry. It is beauty that he sees first of all, but even the most minute and commonplace things have, in his eyes, interest and poetic charm. He does not, indeed, show for the grasshopper and the cricket that human affection which Burns felt for the mouse and the mountain daisy; he rather sympathizes with them as little poets who sing of the joys of life. To the mind of Keats "the poetry of earth is ceasing never."

ALFRED TENNYSON

MORTE D'ARTHUR

The title of this poem is taken from an old French romance, and means the death of Arthur. Arthur is the most famous of all the kings of medieval legend, "the flower of kings," as an old chronicler calls him. He was supposed to be a king of the Britons, the first inhabitants of England, and to have fought and defeated the heathen Saxons who invaded his country. He gathered around him the noblest knights in the world, binding them to him by vows of purity and knightly obedience. But he was betrayed by his wife Guinevere, and by his dearest friend among the knights, Sir Lancelot of the Lake; and while absent from Britain in the attempt to punish Lancelot, his nephew Mordred raised a revolt against him in his own land. Arthur returned, drove the rebel army into the western extremity of the island, and there crushed it in a terrible battle. In this fight all of Arthur's knights but Sir Bedevere were killed, and he himself was mortally wounded by the traitor Mordred, whom he slew with his own hand.

It is at this point that Tennyson's poem begins. It was written in his early life, and was the first of his Idylls of the King, that is, stories of King Arthur, to appear.

LINE 2. winter sea.

According to Tennyson this battle was fought

in December, on the shortest day of the year.

3. King Arthur's Table, a name given to the company of knights that Arthur had gathered about him. The name was taken from the table at which they sat. It was circular in shape, so that no one knight might be said to sit above or below another.

4. Lyonnesse, a mytnical country in Britain to the west of Cornwall, now supposed to be sunk in the sea.

12. a great water, a lake.

14. The sequel of to-day, the result of to-day's battle.

21. Camelot, the legendary capital of Arthur's kingdom, where the knights of the Round Table were accustomed to meet and hold their tournaments.

22. this people which I made, the Britons whom Arthur had saved from their enemies, but who had rebelled against him.

23. Merlin, the famous enchanter who befriended Arthur, and prophesied that he should not die, but only pass away to an unknown land, whence he should come again to rule his people.

27. Excalibur, the name of Arthur's famous sword. The story went that he received it from a fairy called the Lady of the Lake, and when he threw it away it was to be a sign that his reign was ended. So now Arthur, finding himself mortally wounded, orders his one remaining knight to throw the sword into the lake.

31. samite, a rich, silk fabric, interwoven with a gold or silver thread 57. topaz, a precious stone, usually of a light yellow color. - jacinth, a bluish-violet gem.

60. dividing the swift mind, hesitating, now deciding to throw away the sword and now to hide it.

61. In act to throw, in the very act of throwing.

73. thy nature and thy name, thy innate character and thy title of knight. 75. fëalty, the fidelity due to a king.

80. lief, beloved.

81. lightly, quickly.

86. chased, engraved.

94. bond of rule, the tie connecting a king and his subjects, which is broken by their disobedience.

99. empty breath, idle report.

100. rumors of a doubt, doubtful rumors or traditions.

109. much fame were lost, much fame would be lost if the sword were thrown away.

110. clouded with his own conceit, blinded to his duty to the king by his own notion of keeping the sword.

125. offices, dutiful service.

139. the northern morn, the aurora borealis.

140. moving isles of winter, floating icebergs.

186. harness, armor.

193. hove, was waiting; from an old word, hoven, meaning to abide. 197. Black-stoled, black-robed.

198. Three Queens. According to the old story, one of these was Arthur's sister, Morgan le Fay, a famous enchantress, the second the queen of North Wales, the third the queen of the Waste Lands.

199. the tingling stars, the stars that seemed to quiver in the frosty air. 215. greaves, armor for the lower part of the legs, shin pieces. — cuisses, armor for the thighs.

215-216. drops of onset, drops of blood from the battle.

218. daïs-throne, the raised seat that served as Arthur's throne.

224. the lists, the inclosed space in which tournaments were fought. 232. the light, the Star of Bethlehem.

233. The holy Elders, the Wise Men of the East who came to worship the infant Jesus.

251. a blind life, blind to the higher world above the world of the senses, which alone is known to brutes.

259. Avilion, or Avalon, an enchanted island in the western sea. In the old legends Arthur was supposed to have been carried thither by the queens to be healed of his wound.

again to rule his people.

In good time he was to come

This alludes to the old super

267. fluting a wild carol ere her death. stition that the swan sings a wonderfully sweet song just before its death.

ULYSSES

Ulysses, the wisest of all the Grecian chiefs who fought at the famous siege of Troy, was forced by the hate of angry gods to spend ten years in wandering and exile before he was allowed to return to his home. The story of his adventures is told in Homer's Odyssey, Odysseus being the Greek name for Ulysses. He reached his home at last, slew the haughty suitors of his wife Penelope, and settled down in his island kingdom. It had been foretold, however, that he should not remain there in quiet, but should wander once more, and at the last meet his death from the sea No account of his later wanderings is given by Homer or by any of the Greek poets; but in the Middle Ages, Dante,