And this from Suckling:
Why so pale and wan, fond lover?
Prythee, why so pale?
Will, when looking well can't move her,
Looking ill prevail?
Prythee, why so pale?
Why so dull and mute, young sinner?
Prythee, why so mute?
Will, when speaking well can't win her,
Saying nothing do't?
Prythee, why so mute?
Quit, quit, for shame! This will not move;
This cannot take her.
If of herself she will not love,
Nothing can make her:
The Devil take her!
The poetic energy in Keats is here entirely undisturbed. I do not mean that
it is not united to any other energy--though here it happens not to be--as
in poetic drama, where it is united to the dramatic energy and is still
undisturbed in its full activity, but that it is here freely allowed to
work itself out to its consummation without any concession, conscious or
unconscious, to any mood that is not non-poetic but definitely anti-poetic,
in which case, although unchanged in its nature, it would be constrained in
a hostile atmosphere. Keats's words are struck out of a mood that tolerates
nothing but its own full life and is concerned only to satisfy that life by
uncompromising expression.
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