John Keats

John Keats

  John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Perey Bysshe Shelley, despite his works having been in publication for only four years before his death from tuberculosis at the age of 25.

  Although his poems were not generally well received by critics during his lifetime, his reputation grew after his death, and by the end of the 19th century, he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He had a significant influence on a diverse range of poets and writers. Jorge Luis Borges stated that his first encounter with Keats,s work was the most significant literary experience of his wife.

   The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of Odes. This is typical of Romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through an emphasis on natural imagery. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English literature. Some of the most acclaimed works of Keats are "Ode to Nightingale", "Sleep nad Poetry", and the famous sonnet " On First Looking into Chapman's Homer".

  It is impossible to say how much has been lost by Keats's early death. His reputation  grewe steadily throught the 19th century, though as late as the 1840s the pre-Raphaelite painter William Holman Hunt could after to him as "this little- known poet". His influence is found everywhere in the decorative Romantic verse of the Victorian Age, from the early work of Alfred, Lord Tennyson, onward. His general emotional temper and the minute delicacy of his natural observation were greatly admired by the pre - Raphaelites, who both echoed  his poetry in their own and illustrated it in their paintings. Keats's 19th century followers on the whole valued the more superficial aspects of his work, and it was largely left for the 20th century to realize the full range of his technical and intellectual achievement.

1) Ode to Nightingale:-

 "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

   My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains     One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot, But being too happy in thine happiness,-  That though, light-winged Dryad of the trees,     In some melodious plotOf  beechen green, and shadows numberless,  Singest of summer in full-throated ease".

  The speaker opens with a declaration of his own heartache. He feels numb, as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale , he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his "drowsy numbness" is not from envy of the nightingale's happiness, but rather from sharing it too completely; he is "too happy" that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen plot of green trees and shadows.

O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been Cool'd a long age in the deep- delved earth,Tasting of Flora and the country green,Dance, and Provencal song, an sunburnt mirth!O for a beaker full of the warm South,  Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,   With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,      And puple- stained mouth;That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,  And with thee fade away into the forest dim:

In the second stanza, the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine, "a draught of vintage", that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him "leave the world unseen" and disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale.

Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget  what thou among the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever, and the fret  Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;  Where but to think is to be full of sorrow       And leaden - eyed despaires,Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to - morrow.

  In the third stanza, he explains his desire to fade away, saying he would like to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known: "the weariness, the fever, and the fret" of human life, with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts. Youth "grows pale, and spectre - thin, and dies," and " beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes".

Away! away! for I will fly to thee  Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,But on the viewless wings of Poesy,  Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:Already with thee! tender is the night,  And haply the Queen- Moon is on her throne,  Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;      But here there is no light,Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown  Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker tells the Nightingale to fly away, and he will follow, not through alcohol but through poetry, which will give him "viewless wings". He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glade, where even the moonlight is hidden by the trees, except the light that breaks through when the breezes blow the branches.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
  Not what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
  Wherewith the seasonable month endows 
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit - tree wild;
  White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
   Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
       And mid - may's eldest child
The coming musk -rose, full of dewy wine,
  The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.   

In the fifth stanza, the speaker says that he cannot see the flowers in the glade, but can guess them "in embalmed darkness". White hawthorne, eglantine, violets, and the musk - rose, "the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves". 

Darkling I listen; and , for many a time  I have been half in love with easeful Death,Call'd him soft names in many  a mused rhyme,  To take into the air my quite breath;Now more than ever seems it rich to die,  To cease upon the midnight with no pain,    While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad        In such an ecstasy!Still wouldst thou sing,and I have ears in vain-  To thy high requiem become a sod.

In the sixth stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been "half in love" with the idea of dying and called Death soft names in many rhymes. Surrounded by the Nightingale's song, the speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever, and he longs to "cease upon the midnight with no pain" while the nightingale pours its soul ecstatically forth. If he were to die, the nightingale would continue to sing, he says, but he would "have ears in vain" and be no longer able to hear.

Though wast not born for death, immortal Bird!  No hungry generations tread thee down;The voice I hear this passing night was heard   In ancient days by emporer and clown:Perhaps the self - same song that found a path   Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,     She stood in tears amid the alien corn;       The same that oft- times hathCharm'd magic casements, opening on the foamOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

In the seventh stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal, that it was not "born for death". He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard, by ancient emperors and clowns, by homesick Ruth; he even says the song has often charmed open magic windows looking out over "the foam/of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn".

 Forlorn! the very word is like a bell   To toil me back from thee to my sole self!Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well  As she is fam'd to do, deciving elf.Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fadesPast the near meados, over the still stream,  Up the hill - side ; and now 'tis buried deep      In the next valley - glades:Was it a vision, or a waking dream?    Fled is that music: - Do I wake or sleep?

In the eighth stanza, the word forlorn tolls like a hell to restore the speaker from his preoccupation with the nightingale and back into himself. As the nightingale flies further away from him, he laments that his imagination has failed him and says that he can no longer recall whether the nightingale's music was "a vision, or a waking dream". Now that the music is gone, the speaker cannot recall whether he himself is awake or asleep.