When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Janice :

(Poem #1824) When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And think that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till love and fame to nothingness do sink. -- John Keats

Keats has been my one true love. Apart from the other, perhaps more famous
odes, this poem has been an eternal favourite. It is sad, it is beautiful.
It starts on an almost cliched note, the theme of dying and living an
unfulfilled life but Keats' lyricism, style and simplicity lifts it above
the mundane... and when you reach "then on the shore of the wide world I
stand alone, and think / Till love and fame to nothingness do sink" the
imagery and power of those final lines take your breath away. I could go
on... but the beauty of the poem I think lies in the fact that you are left
with that image... and everytime you read it and re-read it it still strikes
just as hard. He was, after all, 26 when he died.

Janice.

To Autumn -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Bill Whiteford

(Poem #1781) To Autumn Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees, And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core; To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells With a sweet kernel; to set budding more, And still more, later flowers for the bees, Until they think warm days will never cease, For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store? Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find Thee sitting careless on a granary floor, Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep, Drows'd with the fume of poppies, while thy hook Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers: And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep Steady thy laden head across a brook; Or by a cyder-press, with patient look, Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,-- While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn Among the river sallows, borne aloft Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft; And gathering swallows twitter in the skies. -- John Keats

I'm not a great fan of the romantic poets, but was struck that colleagues
didn't know where the phrase "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness" came
from . I think quite a lot of Keats is not great, but some of the images
here are memorable. Here in Scotland the twittering swallows are long gone,
but the barred clouds sometimes bloom the soft-dying day. There's lots of
other analysis you could do here (the erotic language of the second verse,
the sense of impending loss of the third), but mainly I would just enjoy the
turn of phrase and the images.

Bill Whiteford.

Ode on a Grecian Urn -- John Keats

Guest poem sent in by Aseem

(Poem #1603) Ode on a Grecian Urn Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness! Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loath? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never, canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou have not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Ah, happy, happy, boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' - that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. -- John Keats

If we are on the subject of grand old poems that have slipped through the
Minstrels net - I can't think of a more startling omission than this one.
For sheer lyricism, Keats is hard to beat. Byron is wittier, I'll grant you,
and certainly more conversational, but nowhere (except perhaps in
Shakespeare) is the English tongue so ravishingly beautiful.

Ode on a Grecian Urn, is, of course, one of those established classics about
which it's difficult to say something without having about half a million
Eng Lit undergrads breathing down one's neck. What I love about it is its
almost solipsistic brilliance - the way the poem, in some sense contains its
own meaning (a distinction it shares with Shakespeare's "Not marble, nor the
gilded monuments" [Poem #1575] - a poem that makes interesting reading with
this btw). For nowhere is the truth of "Beauty is Truth, Truth beauty" more
evident than in this poem.

It's a stunning achievement really - a poem so incredibly sensuous, so
amazingly rich and pleasing to the ear, that manages at the same time to not
only paint with exquisite precision a series of delicate images (so that
reading it you can almost imagine this great mythic vase) but also to be a
direct and compelling statement of Keats' overall aesthetic philosophy. If
you want poetry at its purest, its most classical - this is it.

It's ironic perhaps, and also one of the greatest joys of this poem that
much of what Keats says of the Urn is as true today of his own poetry. "When
old age shall this generation waste / Thou shalt remain, in midst of other
woe / Than ours, a friend to man." If that isn't true of John Keats, I don't
know what other poet it's true of.

Aseem

P.S. Another interesting read to go along with this poem is of course Yeats'
Byzantium [Poem #60] - two great poets, saying, in a way, the same thing,
yet so very different!

Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian, <suresh at hserus dot
net> :

(Poem #1496) Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff Give me women, wine, and snuff Until I cry out "hold, enough!" You may do so sans objection Till the day of resurrection: For, bless my beard, they aye shall be My beloved Trinity. -- John Keats

A short and sweet poem, almost Khayyam-ish, almost certainly strongly
inspired by Khayyam's verse.

This is from his posthumous and fugitive poems - a set of poems that
includes the famous "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" that he wrote during the
last three or four years of his short life, dying of tuberculosis.

On February 3, 1820, Keats suffered a pulmonary haemorrhage - a sign
that he was in the terminal stage of tuberculosis, with death almost
upon him.  He quickly broke off his engagement with Fanny Brawne and
began what he called a "posthumous existence".  He was too ill to
compose any further poems, but the volume Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of
St. Agnes, and Other Poems, including most of his most famous ones, was
published that July.

A year later, he died in Rome on 2/23/1821 and was buried there on
February 26 in the Protestant Cemetery. On his deathbed Keats requested
that his tombstone bear no name, only the words 'Here lies one whose
name was writ in water.'

I remember a poem (I think by Kahlil Gibran) that says something to the
effect that Keats' name was writ in water, when it should have been writ
on the sky in letters of fire. Can't trace the poem though :(  Somebody
please do find it and post it ...

Suresh.

[Minstrels Links]

John Keats:
Poem #12, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer
Poem #182, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Poem #316, Ode to a Nightingale
Poem #433, Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell
Poem #575, To Mrs Reynolds' Cat
Poem #696, Last Sonnet
Poem #770, A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever
Poem #910, On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Omar Khayyam:
Poem #162, Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night
Poem #342, Oh, come with old Khayyam, and leave the Wise
Poem #545, The Moving Finger Writes; and, Having Writ
Poem #654, Think, in this Batter'd Caravanserai
Poem #750, Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough
Poem #1354, Ah, Love!, Could Thou and I with Fate Conspire

On the Grasshopper and the Cricket -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Mike Christie:

(Poem #910) On the Grasshopper and the Cricket The poetry of earth is never dead: When all the birds are faint with the hot sun, And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead; That is the Grasshopper's -- he takes the lead In summer luxury -- he has never done With his delights; for when tired out with fun He rests at ease beneath some pleasant weed. The poetry of earth is ceasing never: On a lone winter evening, when the frost Has wrought a silence, from the stove there shrills The Cricket's song, in warmth increasing ever, And seems to one in drowsiness half lost, The Grasshopper's among some grassy hills. -- John Keats

It's cricket season here in Texas, and the other day a cricket found its way
into our office and started serenading us from a coworker's desk.  We
eventually tracked him down and released him outside, though the corpses of
dozens of his brethren are littering our parking lot, lobby and staircase.

Anyway, he reminded me of Keats' sonnet above, which I've liked since I read
it decades ago.  As I recall, the sonnet was written relatively early in
Keats' career, and was the result of a competition with a friend to write a
sonnet on a grasshopper.  I've never known who the friend was or how his
sonnet came out, though I rather suspect Keats won the competition.  If
anyone can find out I'd love to know.

Mike Christie.

[Minstrels Links]

Other poems by Keats:
Poem #12, On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer
Poem #182, La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Poem #316, Ode to a Nightingale
Poem #433, Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell
Poem #575, To Mrs Reynolds' Cat
Poem #696, Last Sonnet
Poem #770, A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever
Poem #910, On the Grasshopper and the Cricket

Poetry competitions seem to have been quite popular with the Romantics; see
Poem #22, Ozymandias  -- Percy Bysshe Shelley
and its companion piece:
Poem #285, On a Stupendous Leg of Granite, Discovered Standing by Itself in
the Deserts of Egypt, with the Inscription Inserted Below  -- Horace Smith

A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever -- John Keats

(Poem #770) A Thing of Beauty is a Joy for Ever A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darken'd ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits... -- John Keats

Lines taken from 'Endymion', composed in 1818.

Readers interested in the poetic process might be interested to know that
Keats' first draft of this section of Endymion started with the words
   "A thing of beauty is forever a joy"
and it was only much later that he changed the line to its present form.

Which, when you think about it, is a truly fascinating fact: it goes to show
that poets, even the greatest ones, have to work sometimes - inspiration
doesn't always strike the first time around.

thomas.

[On the mythologial figure of Endymion]

Endymion: in Greek mythology, a beautiful youth who spent much of his life
in perpetual sleep. Endymion's parentage varies among the different ancient
references and stories, but several traditions say that he was originally
the king of Elis. According to one tradition, Zeus offered him anything that
he might desire, and Endymion chose an everlasting sleep in which he might
remain youthful forever. According to another version of the myth,
Endymion's eternal sleep was a punishment inflicted by Zeus because he had
ventured to fall in love with Zeus's wife, Hera. In any case, Endymion was
loved by Selene, the goddess of the moon, who visited him every night while
he lay asleep in a cave on Mount Latmus in Caria; she bore him 50 daughters.
A common form of the myth represents Endymion as having been put to sleep by
Selene herself so that she might enjoy his beauty undisturbed.

        -- EB

[On the composition of the poem]

In 1817 Keats left London briefly for a trip to the Isle of Wight and
Canterbury and began work on Endymion, his first long poem. Endymion
appeared in 1818. This work is divided into four 1,000-line sections, and
its verse is composed in loose rhymed couplets. The poem narrates a version
of the Greek legend of the moon goddess Diana's (or Cynthia's) love for
Endymion, a mortal shepherd, but Keats puts the emphasis on Endymion's love
for Diana rather than on hers for him. Keats transformed the tale to express
the widespread Romantic theme of the attempt to find in actuality an ideal
love that has been glimpsed heretofore only in imaginative longings. This
theme is realized through fantastic and discursive adventures and through
sensuous and luxuriant description. In his wanderings in quest of Diana,
Endymion is guilty of an apparent infidelity to his visionary moon goddess
and falls in love with an earthly maiden to whom he is attracted by human
sympathy. But in the end Diana and the earthly maiden turn out to be one and
the same. The poem equates Endymion's original romantic ardour with a more
universal quest for a self-destroying transcendence in which he might
achieve a blissful personal unity with all creation. Keats, however, was
dissatisfied with the poem as soon as it was finished.

        -- EB

[Minstrels Links]

John Keats:
Poem #12, "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer"
Poem #182, "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"
Poem #316, "Ode to a Nightingale"
Poem #433, "Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell"
Poem #575, "To Mrs Reynolds' Cat"
Poem #696, "Last Sonnet"

George Gordon, Lord Byron:
Poem #62, "So We'll Go No More a-Roving"
Poem #169, "She Walks in Beauty"
Poem #510, "There is a pleasure in the pathless woods"
Poem #547, "The Isles of Greece"
Poem #718, "The Destruction of Sennacherib"

Samuel Taylor Coleridge:
Poem #30, "Kubla Khan"
Poem #361, "Cologne"
Poem #549, "Metrical Feet - A Lesson for a Boy"

Percy Bysshe Shelley:
Poem #22, "Ozymandias"
Poem #329, "Ode to the West Wind"
Poem #399, "The Indian Serenade"
Poem #416, "The Fitful Alternations of the Rain"
Poem #500, "A Dirge"
Poem #531, "Love's Philosophy"
Poem #592, "Sonnet: England in 1819"

William Wordsworth:
Poem #63        "Daffodils"
Poem #82        "The Solitary Reaper"
Poem #128       "London, 1802"
Poem #376       "She Dwelt Among the Untrodden Ways"
Poem #411       "The Tables Turned"
Poem #441       "The Simplon Pass"
Poem #462       "Composed Upon Westminster Bridge, September 3, 1802"
Poem #759       "A Complaint"

[Moreover]

I seem to remember reading the (marvellously punning) phrase "mooned about
Endymion" somewhere, but I can't for the life of me remember where. Does
anyone on the list have a clue?

Last Sonnet -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta:

(Poem #696) Last Sonnet Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night, And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priest-like task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death. -- John Keats

Of course, this one needs no introduction. I thought of this sonnet, which I
had read and loved in school, when reading "The more loving one" by Auden.
This is a beautiful love poem, and I agree with you that Keats is the most
"natural" poet of the language - whatever he wrote became poetry. Here, the
imagery in the octet is purely Romantic - especially "The moving waters at
their priest-like task/Of pure ablution round earth's human shores"; but the
sestet turns the focus inward and makes it beautifully tender and intimate -
the poet looking at the sleeping form of his beloved and wishing he could
capture the moment forever. Not a startlingly original emotion, nor by any
means a unique conceit, but perfectly and gracefully executed.

Anustup.

[Links]

"The More Loving One", W. H. Auden, Poem #618

Other Keats poems:

"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer", Poem #12
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Poem #182
"Ode to a Nightingale", Poem #316
"Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell", Poem #33
"To Mrs Reynolds' Cat", Poem #575

To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat -- John Keats

Guest poem submitted by Suresh Ramasubramanian:

(Poem #575) To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat Cat! who hast pass'd thy grand climacteric, How many mice and rats hast in thy days Destroy'd? -- How many tit bits stolen? Gaze With those bright languid segments green, and prick Those velvet ears -- but pr'ythee do not stick Thy latent talons in me -- and upraise Thy gentle mew -- and tell me all thy frays Of fish and mice, and rats and tender chick. Nay, look not down, nor lick thy dainty wrists -- For all the wheezy asthma, -- and for all Thy tail's tip is nick'd off -- and though the fists Of many a maid have given thee many a maul, Still is that fur as soft as when the lists In youth thou enter'dst on glass-bottled wall. -- John Keats

Keats doesn't need any introduction anyway ;)  As for the poem itself, it's
a charming commentary on an old cat. Light-hearted, enjoyable - and
brilliant.

Suresh.

[thomas adds]

A classical Petrarchan sonnet: iambic pentameter, the octave rhyming
_abbaabba_, the sestet _cdcdcd_. It's a testimony to the power of the sonnet
that even the Romantics, with their emphasis on freedom and spontaneity,
continued to write notable pieces in this form... today's poem may not soar
to the heights of Keats' great "On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer" [1],
but it does not aspire to do so in the first place. Instead, as Suresh said,
it remains an excellent example of light verse, charming and enjoyable.

thomas.

[1] (poem #12)

Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell -- John Keats

Guest poem sent in by Aseem Kaul ()

One of my favourites...

(Poem #433) Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell No God, no demon of severe response Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell Then to my human heart I turn at once: Heart, thou and I are here, sad and alone, Say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! O darkness! darkness! Forever must I moan To question heaven and hell and heart in vain? Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease My fancy to it's utmost blisses spreads Yet would I on this very midnight cease And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed But death intenser, death is life's high meed. -- John Keats

What I love about this poem is the fact that its so uncharacteristic of
Keats - so dark and feverish, quite a change from his usual tranquility:
Keats is still ceasing upon the midnight, but no longer 'with no pain'. Plus
of course it's a poem that cries out to be read aloud, the repetition of the
original question adding a dramatic soul-searching intensity: almost like
the sound of a man drawing in air between fits of pain. But that's not all
that makes it dramatically intense - there's also the alternation between
anger and anguish, between god and demons on the one hand, and his own heart
on the other, all of it ending with an almost heroic disillusionment that
one (or at any rate I) associates so much more with Shelley than with Keats.
Altogether a wonderful poem that shows off the more savage side of Keats to
perfection.

Aseem.

[I've added in a few links - m.]

Links:

Here's an analysis of the poem:
http://icdweb.cc.purdue.edu/%7Efelluga/Apaper241F98.html

And an excellent Keats site, complete with biography:
http://www.john-keats.com/

(The above site also has a 'vote for your favourite Keats poem' poll - worth
taking a second or two on)

Ode to a Nightingale -- John Keats

It's been some time since we did a 'famous' poem...

(Poem #316) Ode to a 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 thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees In some melodious plot Of beechen green, and shadows numberless, Singest of summer in full-throated ease. 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, and 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 purple-stained mouth; That I might drink, and leave the world unseen, And with thee fade away into the forest dim: 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 despairs, Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes, Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow. 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. I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, Nor 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. 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 quiet 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. Thou 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 emperor 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 hath Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. Forlorn! the very word is like a bell To toll me back from thee to my sole self! Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf. Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades Past the near meadows, 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? -- John Keats

We haven't had much Keats on the Minstrels - only two poems prior to
this, as a matter of fact. Which is surprising, given his stature -
long-time readers of the Minstrels will know that I don't care much for
the Romantics, but I do like Keats. A great deal.

'Nightingale' is possibly Keats' best-loved work (though personally I
prefer 'On First Looking into Chapman's Homer', which I think is about
as close to perfection as a poem can get) - I know several people (Hi
Mom!) who consider it among their favourite few poems of all time. And
it's no surprise, really - rarely have words been crafted to such
sublime effect; rarely have sound and meaning and feeling come together
in such perfect balance; rarely have phrases sounded so _right_, so
perfect that you get the feeling that they've always existed, and all
the poet did was to pluck them out of the ether, fully formed.

In a way, that's what Keats is all about. Not for him the metaphysics of
Shelley, the lushness of Byron, the down-to-earth genius of Wordsworth,
or the flights of fancy of Coleridge: Keats is, in the truest sense of
the word, a minstrel of the emotions. Perhaps more than any other writer
before or since [1], he had the ability to distil in its purest form
that quality called 'poetry' in his verse. He doesn't use ornate or
flowery language; his rhymes and rhythms are often less than perfect;
his themes can be ordinary. And yet his words are just magical - sheer
music.

thomas.

[1] always excepting Shakespeare

PS. The science-fictionally inclined among you are heartily encouraged
to read Dan Simmon's Nebula-winning novel 'Hyperion', which (as the
title suggests) is about (among many other things) John Keats.

PPS. Alert readers will have noticed some repetition of ideas from my
previous commentaries on Keats. Forgive me.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci -- John Keats

It's been far too long since we did a Keats...

(Poem #182) La Belle Dame Sans Merci O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing. O, what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone? The squirrel's granary is full, And the harvest's done. I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever dew; And on thy cheek a fading rose Fast withereth too. I met a lady in the meads Full beautiful --- a faery's child; Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She look'd at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long; For sideways would she lean, and sing A faery's song. She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild, and manna dew; And sure in language strange she said, 'I love thee true.' She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild sad eyes With kisses four. And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd --- ah! woe betide! --- The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side. I saw pale kings, and princes too, Pale warriors, death-pale were they all; They cried --- 'La Belle Dame sans Merci Hath thee in thrall!' I saw their starved lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here On the cold hill side. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering; Though the sedge is wither'd from the lake, And no birds sing. -- John Keats

from Life, Letters and Literary Remains, 1848.

... not that I'm a great fan of 19th century poetry in general, but I've
always liked Keats. And 'La Belle Dame Sans Merci' is my second
favouritest poem by him (the bestest, of course, is the incomparable 'On
First Looking into Chapman's Homer', Minstrels poem #12) (yes, it's been
some time).

If I had to name one poet of sheer unadulterated natural genius (as
opposed to skill or craftsmanship it would probably be Keats. Perhaps
more than any other writer before or since [1], he had the ability to
distil in its purest form that quality called 'poetry' in his verse. He
doesn't use ornate or flowery language; his rhymes and rhythms are often
less than perfect; his themes can be ordinary. And yet his words are
just magical - pure music.

thomas.

[1] always excepting Shakespeare

[Links] Of course, poem #12

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer -- John Keats

the first 'famous' poem that i'm sending...

(Poem #12) On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. Oft of one wide expanse had I been told That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne; Yet never did I breathe its pure serene Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold. Then felt I like some watcher of the skies When a new planet swims into his ken; Or like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes He star'd at the Pacific - and all his men Look'd at each other with a wild surmise - Silent, upon a peak in Darien. -- John Keats

from 'Poems', 1817

This is easily one of the two most beautifully evocative poems I've ever
read, the other one being Coleridge's 'Kublai Khan' . It's no
coincidence that both poems were written within a few years of each
other, by poets who would come to symbolize their time: the Romantic
Revolution of the early 18th century occasioned a paradigm shift in the
theory of poetic expression, and the Romantic poets (Byron, Shelley,
Keats, Coleridge and Wordsworth, among others) consciously strove to
express their innermost feelings through their verse. And although I
don't care much for the Romantics per se, I have to admit that I'm
deeply moved by the best of their verse.

Coming back to today's poem... Keats was (even among the Romantics)
acknowledged to be the master of the evocative phrase; much of his
poetry is as pure as music. Not for him the metaphysics of Shelley, the
lushness of Byron, the down-to-earth genius of Wordsworth, or the
flights of fancy of Coleridge: Keats was a poet in the purest sense of
the word - a minstrel of the emotions.

'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer' - well, I think that every
single phrase of this poem is as close to perfection as it's possible to
get. The very last line is simply sublime. I can say no more.

thomas.

PS. One of these days I'll write and send an essay on various movements
in the history of poetry - ie, the metaphysical poets, the romantics,
the imagists, the beats... just give me time, give me time.