The Poetry of R.E. Slater: John Keats

"Autobiographies of great nations are written in three manuscripts – a book of deeds, a book of words, and a book of art. Of the three, I would choose the latter as truest testimony." - Sir Kenneth Smith, Great Civilisations

"I must write each day without fail, not so much for the success of the work, as in order not to get out of my routine." - Leo Tolstoy

I have never believed that one should wait until one is inspired because I think the pleasures of not writing are so great that if you ever start indulging them you will never write again. - John Updike

"The life of every man is a diary in which he means to write one story, and writes another; and his humblest hour is when he compares the volume as it is with what he vowed to make it." - J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations." - Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Friday, February 28, 2014

John Keats - Ode to a Nightingale

Poet John Keats

Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.

John Keats. 1795–1821

624. 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,	5
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.	10

O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool'd a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!	15
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim:	20

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 grey hairs,	25
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.	30

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,	35
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.	40

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;	45
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.	50

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 musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,	55
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.	60

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	65
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.	70

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 famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades	75
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?	80

Source: Bartleby.com - http://www.bartleby.com/101/624.html

John Keats, 1795-1821

Ode to a Nightingale: Written May 1819, Publ January 1829

Biography

http://www.bbc.co.uk/poetryseason/poets/john_keats.shtml

To some he is the king of the Romantic poets. John Keats only lived for 25 years, but in that time managed to produce an array of sensual poems that have reverberated across literature and popular culture.

Born in 1795, Keats came from a modest background and had lost both his parents by the time he was 15. From a young age he wanted to be a poet, but studied medicine at Guy's Hospital. There he began communicating with Leigh Hunt, an established poet who praised Keats' work and encouraged him to give up his studies and concentrate on literature full-time. Keats developed the notion of "negative capability" - the idea that the poet must be able to lose himself in an imaginative experience to create great poetry.

The struggle of the poet to achieve this ideal state is explored in poems such as Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn . Around 1818 Keats contracted tuberculosis. The following year he met the unrequited love of his life Fanny Brawne, and it is this period which gave rise to the beguilingly beautiful odes for which he is best remembered. In summer 1820 Keats travelled to Italy to recuperate. However he fell ill during the journey and died in 1821. He is buried in Rome, under the epitaph: 'Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water.'

Keats' impact is hard to overestimate. Keats didn't just stir fellow poets, such as Alfred, Lord Tennyson, his influence can still be found in books as wildly diverse as Neil Gaiman's graphic novels and science fiction writer Dan Simmons.

The Romantics - Liberty (BBC documentary)

The Romantics - Eternity (BBC documentary) BBC History Essentials

Byron, Keats and Shelley lived short lives, but the radical

way in which they lived them would change the world.