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Stillinger silently changes indentation in sixteen poems from the three original Keats volumes. Affected are eight 1817 poems in couplets (including "I stood tip-toe" and "Sleep and Poetry"), Endymion, three 1817 sonnets ("How many bards gild the lapses of time," "O Solitude," "To Kosciusko"), and four 1820 odes ("Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "To Autumn," "Ode on Melancholy"). Although the sonnets and odes are more strikingly affected by Stillinger's policy than the narrative and epistolary poems, I will present all the evidence so that readers may judge for themselves the aesthetic and interpretive implications of each emendation.

To insure that all verse paragraphs begin with indentions (a goal he articulates in his apparatus, see silent emendation four, above), Stillinger emends the following 1817 poems in couplets and Endymion: "I stood tiptoe"[4] (indenting ll. 29, 35, 47, 57, 61, 107, 163, 181, 193, 205, 211), "Specimen

of an Induction to a Poem" (l. 49), "Calidore" (ll. 19, 34, 38, 42, 46, 64, 73, 109, 134, 152), "Hadst thou liv'd in days of old" (l. 41), "To George Felton Matthew" (ll. 11, 31, 53, 72), "To My Brother George" (ll. 19, 53, 67), "To Charles Cowden Clarke" (l. 21), "Sleep and Poetry" (ll. 19, 41, 47, 85, 96, 122, 155, 181, 230, 270, 339, 381, 385, 389), Endymion (IV, 240 [Stillinger's IV, 238]). 1817 indents only one line in these eight poems, 248 of "Sleep and Poetry." Otherwise, verse paragraphs are not indented. The first edition of Endymion, on the other hand, makes a practice of indenting paragraphs, and the non-indention of IV, 240 is an exception.

In the 1817 sonnets, Stillinger emends the sestets of three poems, apparently to match rhyming lines. (He agrees with 1817 in identing ll. 2-3, 6-7 of the octave.) To be specific, 1817 indents 10, 12, 14 of "How many bards" and "O Solitude," while Stillinger indents 10, 11, 13. As both poems have a CDDCDC rhyme scheme in the sestet, juxtaposition of Stillinger's and 1817's versions of the sestet from "O Solitude" will visualize Stillinger's emendation of the two sonnets:

In "To Kosciusko," whose sestet employs the more classic Petrarchan rhyme of CDEDCE, 1817 indents 10, 11, 14. Stillinger, on the other hand, indents 10, 12 and double-indents 11, 14:

As in the octave of the 1817 sonnets, Stillinger's indenting of the 1820 odes agrees with copy-text in the opening of each stanza. Like 1820, he indents ll. 2, 4 of all stanzas, presenting these first four lines as, in Miriam

Allcott's words, "one quatrain from a Shakespearian sonnet."[5] There are, however, emendations to the latter portions of several stanzas. In particular, in stanza six of "Ode to a Nightingale," 1820 indents 56, 59, double-indents 54, and indents 57 (the "short" line) by six spaces, while Stillinger indents 55, 58, and double-indents 56, 59 (also indenting 57 by six spaces):[6]

In his edition of "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Stillinger silently emends indentation in the final three lines of stanzas two and five. Whereas 1820 indents 19 and double-indents 20, Stillinger indents 20 and double-indents 19. And 1820 leaves 41 unindented, indenting 49 and double-indenting 50, while Stillinger leaves 49 unindented, indenting 48 and double-indenting 50:

Finally, Stillinger differs from 1820 in stanza one of "To Autumn": although 1820 leaves 8 unindented and indents 9, 10, Stillinger indents 8 and leaves 9, 10 unindented. And in stanza three of "Ode on Melancholy," 1820 indents 29 and double-indents 30, whereas Stillinger indents 28, leaves 29 unindented, and double-indents 30.