Notes on "I Stood Tiptoe..."

 

Part of Keats' draft of "I Stood Tiptoe..."

[Image source: https://www.hamhigh.co.uk/news/fragment-of-keats-poem-sells-for-world-record-breaking-price-3444706 . Charles Cowden Clarke cut Keats' draft into thirteen fragments and distributed them to friends. This particular fragment sold for £181,250 in April 2013. See end of post for an image of both sides of the fragment. The side shown above is lines 181-195 (the beginning of the Endymion section); on the other side is lines 157-173 (Syrinx and Narcissus).]

[Keats calls the story of Endymion "the sweetest of all songs", something I discussed in another post: 

https://michaelpeverett.blogspot.com/2022/11/all-tendrils-green.html .]

The poem we call "I Stood Tiptoe" had no title when it opened the Poems of 1817. Keats himself seems to have referred to it as "Endymion", until he conceived his larger poem. 

Leigh Hunt says "this poem was suggested to Keats by a delightful summer-day, as he stood beside the gate that leads from the Battery of Hampstead Heath into a field by Caen Wood" (Lord Byron and Some of his Contemporaries (1828), I, page 413). In fact the references to violets, bluebells, hawthorn, laburnum, etc generally imply a day in mid-May.  However there's some intrusion from slightly later flowering seasons; honeysuckle, and especially evening-primrose. (Keats is usually said to have begun the poem in Margate in August 1816. He completed it in November.)

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill, 
The air was cooling, and so very still. 
That the sweet buds which with a modest pride 
Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside, 
Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,       
Had not yet lost those starry diadems 
Caught from the early sobbing of the morn. 

...

So I straightway began to pluck a posey 

Of luxuries bright, milky, soft and rosy. 

(Lines 1-7, 27-28. Text from Poems (1817), by John Keats, on Project Gutenberg:

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/8209/8209-h/8209-h.htm  .  I've yet to track down an image of this page in the original 1817 edition, so I don't know if the full stop at the end of line 2 is an old mistake or a new one.)

Keats doesn't name the plant with the "sweet buds", nor is it clear if his "posey" is a literal one and refers to the same plant. But taking them both together, I'm thinking of Wood Anemone (Anemone nemorosa), whose stems taper and have only a single pair of leaves. Also, the buds "pull droopingly", though the stems become erect when the flowers open fully. It's one of the common spring plants that you might well be inclined to gather a posy of, and "milky, soft and rosy" could describe the petals, flushed with pink on the outside. 

The buds are still dewy; dew is one of the images that keeps recurring in Keats' early poems, like the moon and swans. The poem begins here, well before noon presumably. By line 107 it will reach evening, but this is not a steady progress through a day. Neither time nor place stay fixed for very long. There is a fitfulness and spontaneity to Keats' early poetic; he writes about writing narrative, but he doesn't do it. Anbd there's a basic incompleteness to all the poems in Poems 1817. With Endymion he set about writing something complete: and he duly completed his task, but immediately un-completed the poem with his own dismissive comments on it. 

A bush of May flowers with the bees about them; 

Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;         

And let a lush laburnum oversweep them, 

And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them 

Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets, 

That they may bind the moss in leafy nets. 

 

A filbert hedge with wildbriar overtwined,         

And clumps of woodbine taking the soft wind 

Upon their summer thrones; there too should be 

The frequent chequer of a youngling tree, 

That with a score of light green brethen shoots 

From the quaint mossiness of aged roots:       

Round which is heard a spring-head of clear waters 

Babbling so wildly of its lovely daughters 

The spreading blue bells: it may haply mourn 

That such fair clusters should be rudely torn 

From their fresh beds, and scattered thoughtlessly         

By infant hands, left on the path to die. 

(lines 29-46)

May flowers: Hawthorn blossom. 

Filbert: Hazel.

Wildbriar: Dog Rose. (In contrast with "sweet briar", line 135)

Woodbine: Honeysuckle. Flowering generally starts in June. 

The youngling tree and its light green breth[r]en: "Any body who has seen a throng of young beeches, furnishing those natural clumpy seats at the root, must recognize the truth and grace of this description" (Leigh Hunt in The Examiner).

... Something like this (but these are Sweet Chestnut, not Beech). Powdermill Wood, Battle, 3 September 2022.

Blue bell: The plant now known as Hyacinthoides non-scripta has been assigned to various genera. The fact that one of its names is Endymion non-scriptus is a total coincidence, I suppose: it only acquired that name in 1849 (Garcke). When Keats wrote "I Stood Tiptoe", the bluebell would have been Hyacinthus non-scriptus (Linnaeus, 1753) or Scilla non-scripta (Hofmannsegg and Link, 1803). Torn-up bluebells scattered along a path is still a commonplace sight each spring; they are the kind of plant that attracts childish hands. Like the non-native plants it's a reminder that Keats' nature has a pervasively urban quality. His personification of the spring-head has a certain jocularity, but perhaps also a certain credibility, because it lies so close to a great metropolis. At any rate this image of man's agency will be followed by renewed emphasis on the agency of plants and animals. Nature is all in motion:  marigold flowers spread to the sunlight, sweet peas catch and bind, evening-primrose buds flip open for the moths, minnows switch position in response to a shadow, goldfinches skim over the water to sip and sleek their feathers. 

Open afresh your round of starry folds,

Ye ardent marigolds!

Dry up the moisture from your golden lids,

For great Apollo bids

That in these days your praises should be sung

On many harps, which he has lately strung;

(lines 47-52)

The flowers of Calendula open in bright daylight. The first allusion to the poets mentioned in the epigraph ("Places of nestling green for Poets made") arrives with a couple of trimeters that evoke something like Lycidas; the only other trimeter is line 184, near the start of the Endymion section.

 The tension of the "strung" harps is carried through into the lines about the sweet peas, which like this poet are on tip-toe; we're in fact no longer securely located on the little hill of the opening lines, but are already taking a flight. In the midst of the next scene (the stream with its minnows and sipping goldfinches), Keats says "Were I in such a place" (93). We have been transported to a scene of imagination, not record.

What next? A tuft of evening primroses, 

O’er which the mind may hover till it dozes; 

O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep, 

But that ’tis ever startled by the leap         

Of buds into ripe flowers; 

(lines 107-111)

A striking phenomenon, if you ever happen to sit beside an evening-primrose plant in the evening. There are various YouTube videos showing the buds "leaping" into flower. Here's one by BocaJoe:

These North American plants had been introduced into Britain in about 1600. Maybe Keats was familiar with them from his apothecary studies. The flowers lead us into twilight, to moths and to another transforming moment, the moon. 

Of buds into ripe flowers; or by the flitting

Of diverse moths, that aye their rest are quitting;

Or by the moon lifting her silver rim

Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim

Coming into the blue with all her light.

O Maker of sweet poets, dear delight

Of this fair world, and all its gentle livers;

Spangler of clouds, halo of crystal rivers,

Mingler with leaves, and dew and tumbling streams,

Closer of lovely eyes to lovely dreams,

Lover of loneliness, and wandering,

Of upcast eye, and tender pondering!

Thee must I praise above all other glories

That smile us on to tell delightful stories.

For what has made the sage or poet write

But the fair paradise of Nature's light?

In the calm grandeur of a sober line,

We see the waving of the mountain pine;

And when a tale is beautifully staid,

We feel the safety of a hawthorn glade:

(lines 111-130)

This is also about agency. Does nature play an active role in making poetry? If nature is evoked when we read, is it evidence that nature also played a part in creating the poetry? Keats thinks so, and after several more lines about the audience's feeling suddenly switches to the author's feeling and finally to the characters' feelings:

When it is moving on luxurious wings,

The soul is lost in pleasant smotherings:

Fair dewy roses brush against our faces,

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases;

O'er head we see the jasmine and sweet briar,

And bloomy grapes laughing from green attire;

While at our feet, the voice of crystal bubbles

Charms us at once away from all our troubles:

So that we feel uplifted from the world,

Walking upon the white clouds wreath'd and curl'd.

So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went

On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;

What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips

First touch'd;

(lines 131-144)

And flowering laurels spring from diamond vases: 

I abandon with regret the thought that Keats might have meant the mountain laurel Kalmia latifolia, native to the eastern USA and introduced to British gardens in the eighteenth century. (As it happens Kalmia's attractive flowers have their own special dynamic feature: their stamens are tensed, so pollen is flung onto visiting insects.) Anyway, from what I can see all previous uses of "flowering laurel" are American and refer to Kalmia.  (I think we can ignore Cherry Laurel (Prunus laurocerasus); the blossom isn't very beautiful and it has a piercing scent; bringing it indoors is a recipe for a nasty headache.) 

Anyway, Keats means Sweet Bay (Laurus nobilis), the classical laurel of poetic triumph (also the bay-leaf of aromatic stews). Compare:

O Poesy! for thee I grasp my pen

That am not yet a glorious denizen

Of thy wide heaven: yet to my ardent prayer,

Yield from thy sanctuary some clear air,

Smooth'd for intoxication by the breath

Of flowering bays, that I may die a death

Of luxury, and my young spirit follow

The morning sunbeams to the great Apollo

Like a fresh sacrifice; or, if I can bear

The o'erwhelming sweets, 'twill bring to me the fair

Visions of all places ...

(Sleep and Poetry, lines 53-63)

The emphasis on flowering is odd; flowering had not usually been regarded as an important element in the plant's iconography. Sweet Bay flowers are very small, but a spray with this golden bloom might be considered pretty enough to go in a vase. Perhaps the Sleep and Poetry passage accounts for it by implying that the plant's aroma is at its most overwhelming when in flower.  Leigh Hunt picked up on Keats' insistence on "flowering" laurel when he wrote his sonnet "To John Keats":

'Tis well you think me truly one of those,

Whose sense discerns the loveliness of things;

For surely as I feel the bird that sings

Behind the leaves, or dawn as it up grows,

Or the rich bee rejoicing as he goes,

Or the glad issue of emerging springs,

Or overhead the glide of a dove's wings,

Or turf, or trees, or, midst of all, repose.

And surely as I feel things lovelier still,

The human look, and the harmonious form

Containing woman, and the smile in ill,

And such a heart as Charles's, wise and warm,--

As surely as all this, I see, ev'n now,

Young Keats, a flowering laurel on your brow.

This was in early December 1816 (Keats first met Hunt in October 1816). A laurel crown was given to the winner of Hunt's sonnet-writing competitions, and indeed Keats did go on to win one, as recorded in Keats' sonnet "On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt". 

Keats later came to regret his involvement in these Huntian pantomimes and laurel crownings, when they were derisively seized on by hostile critics.

*

Perhaps the "flowering laurel" phrase had a brief vogue at this time. It shows up in these somewhat cloudy lines:

Few, happy few, whose soul inspiring course

Has proudly centered in that sacred source,

Whose flowering laurels shade the idol'd fane,

And Fame, and Wit, and Worth, and Honour reign.

From Robert Waln, Jr (1794 - 1825),  American Bards, A Satire (Philadelphia, 1820), quoted in a review in The Analectic Magazine, 1820. The author, son of an eminent and wealthy Quaker, was first a satirist and then a social historian: you can read more about him in this 1952 article by William S. Hastings: https://www.jstor.org/stable/20088327 . Short-lived like Keats, he never found the key to literary immortality, but I should like to read more of his work. 

*

sweet briar (line 135). 

Rosa rubiginosa, a wild rose, also known as eglantine, that in my experience crops up much more often in English literature than in real life. It's native to chalk and limestone country. It is "sweet" because the leaves and stems have apple-scented glands. If Keats knew the plant directly, it might be as a garden plant, in contrast to the "wild briar" of the opening lines on Hampstead Heath (Dog Rose, Rosa canina). But "sweet briar" might equally have come to Keats out of the pages of Spenser or Thomson. In this passage he is after all talking about the sensation of reading "luxurious" poetry, not directly describing nature. Here sweetbriar combines with jasmine and laurel to envelop us in fragrance, along with bloomy grapes and dewy roses to suggest a quasi-sexual transport.

So felt he, who first told, how Psyche went

On the smooth wind to realms of wonderment;

What Psyche felt, and Love, when their full lips

First touch'd; what amorous, and fondling nips

They gave each other's cheeks; with all their sighs,

And how they kist each other's tremulous eyes:

The silver lamp,—the ravishment,—the wonder—

The darkness,—loneliness,—the fearful thunder;

Their woes gone by, and both to heaven upflown,

To bow for gratitude before Jove's throne.

(lines 141-150)

The story is told at length by Apuleius (2nd century CE) in The Golden Ass, though there are artistic representations that are much older. Keats' emphasis here is on their kisses, as, more subtly, in the Ode to Psyche (lines 17-20):

      Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

       At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

Somehow that Keatsian emphasis made its way down to Arthur Donnithorne, as he takes hold of Hetty Sorrel:

Ah, he doesn’t know in the least what he is saying. This is not what he meant to say. His arm is stealing round the waist again; it is tightening its clasp; he is bending his face nearer and nearer to the round cheek; his lips are meeting those pouting child-lips, and for a long moment time has vanished. He may be a shepherd in Arcadia for aught he knows, he may be the first youth kissing the first maiden, he may be Eros himself, sipping the lips of Psyche—it is all one.

(George Eliot, Adam Bede (1859), Ch. 13)

Title page of Keats' Poems (1817)

[Image source: https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2019/fine-books-and-manuscripts-including-the-olympic-manifesto/keats-john-poems-london-c-j-ollier-1817 .]

The epigraph shown here (but missing from my copy of Keats' Complete Poems) is 

"What more felicity can fall to creature,

"Than to enjoy delight with liberty." 

                           Fate of the Butterfly. -- SPENSER.

Also missing is this note, on the reverse of the title page:

[The Short Pieces in the middle of the Book, as well as some of the Sonnets,

were written at an earlier period than the rest of the Poems.]

The top of the first page looks like this: 

POEMS.

"Places of nestling green for Poets made."

                           STORY OF RIMINI.

I stood tip-toe upon a little hill,

The air was cooling, and so very still.

That the sweet buds which with a modest pride

Pull droopingly, in slanting curve aside,

Their scantly leaved, and finely tapering stems,

Had not yet lost those starry diadems

Caught from the early sobbing of the morn.   ... etc

Endymion on the left, Syrinx and Narcissus on the right

[Image source: https://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2013/01/09/john-keats-poem-auction_n_2437184.html .]

*

I learned a lot from the splendid site Mapping Keats's Progress: A Critical Chronology , by G. Kim Blank of the University of Victoria (Canada). At first I was a bit misled by its uncluttered interface; don't make the same mistake! To drill down to the rich detail you need to click first on a year (e.g. 1818), then a month (e.g. JUN), and finally a post title (e.g. 22 June 1818: Keats's Northern Expedition Begins).