Sappho - Selected Poems and Fragments

http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Greek/Sappho.htm#_Toc76357041

Translated by A. S. Kline © 2005 All Rights Reserved
This work may be freely reproduced, stored, and transmitted, electronically or otherwise, for any non-commercial purpose.

Sappho - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sappho
( /ˈsæfoʊ/; Attic Greek Σαπφώ [sapːʰɔː], Aeolic Greek Ψάπφω [psapːʰɔː]) was an Ancient Greek poet, born on the island of Lesbos. Later Greeks included her in the list of nine lyric poets. Her birth was sometime between 630 and 612 BC, and it is said that she died around 570 BC, but little is known for certain about her life. The bulk of her poetry, which was well-known and greatly admired throughout antiquity, has been lost, but her immense reputation has endured through surviving fragments.

Contents

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’3

‘Be here, by me’4

‘Come to me here from Crete’5

‘The stars around the beautiful moon’6

‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’7

‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’8

‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’9

‘Love shook my heart’10

‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’11

‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’12

Fragments, on Love and Desire. 13

Fragments, on the Muses. 16

‘I have a daughter, golden’18

‘Hesperus, you bring back again’19

‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’

‘The Moon is down’20

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite’

Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,

I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,

Don’t shatter my heart with fierce

Pain, goddess,

But come now, if ever before

You heard my voice, far off, and listened,

And left your father’s golden house,

And came,

Yoking your chariot. Lovely the swift

Sparrows that brought you over black earth

A whirring of wings through mid-air

Down the sky.

They came. And you, sacred one,

Smiling with deathless face, asking

What now, while I suffer: why now

I cry out to you, again:

What now I desire above all in my

Mad heart. ‘Whom now, shall I persuade

To admit you again to her love,

Sappho, who wrongs you now?

If she runs now she’ll follow later,

If she refuses gifts she’ll give them.

If she loves not, now, she’ll soon

Love against her will.’

Come to me now, then, free me

From aching care, and win me

All my heart longs to win. You,

Be my friend.




‘Be here, by me’

Be here, by me,

Lady Hera, I pray

Who answered the Atreides,

Glorious kings.

They gained great things

There, and at sea,

And came towards Lesbos,

Their home path barred

Till they called to you, to Zeus

Of suppliants, to Dionysus, Thyone’s

Lovely child: be kind now,

Help me, as you helped them…




‘Come to me here from Crete’

Come to me here from Crete,

To this holy temple, where

Your lovely apple grove stands,

And your altars that flicker

With incense.

And below the apple branches, cold

Clear water sounds, everything shadowed

By roses, and sleep that falls from

Bright shaking leaves.

And a pasture for horses blossoms

With the flowers of spring, and breezes

Are flowing here like honey:

Come to me here,

Here, Cyprian, delicately taking

Nectar in golden cups

Mixed with a festive joy,

And pour.




‘The stars around the beautiful moon’

The stars around the beautiful moon

Hiding their glittering forms

Whenever she shines full on earth….

Silver….




‘He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,’

He is dying, Cytherea, your tender Adonis,

What should we do?

Beat your breasts, girls, tear your tunics…




‘Some say horsemen, some say warriors’

Some say horsemen, some say warriors,

Some say a fleet of ships is the loveliest

Vision in this dark world, but I say it’s

What you love.

It’s easy to make this clear to everyone,

Since Helen, she who outshone

All others in beauty, left

A fine husband,

And headed for Troy

Without a thought for

Her daughter, her dear parents…

Led astray….

And I recall Anaktoria, whose sweet step

Or that flicker of light on her face,

I’d rather see than Lydian chariots

Or the armed ranks of the hoplites.




‘Stand up and look at me, face to face’

Stand up and look at me, face to face

My friend,

Unloose the beauty of your eyes.....




‘Love shook my heart’

Love shook my heart,

Like the wind on the mountain

Troubling the oak-trees.




‘He’s equal with the Gods, that man’

He’s equal with the Gods, that man

Who sits across from you,

Face to face, close enough, to sip

Your voice’s sweetness,

And what excites my mind,

Your laughter, glittering. So,

When I see you, for a moment,

My voice goes,

My tongue freezes. Fire,

Delicate fire, in the flesh.

Blind, stunned, the sound

Of thunder, in my ears.

Shivering with sweat, cold

Tremors over the skin,

I turn the colour of dead grass,

And I’m an inch from dying.




‘But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,’

But you, O Dika, wreathe lovely garlands in your hair,

Weave shoots of dill together, with slender hands,

For the Graces prefer those who are wearing flowers,

And turn away from those who go uncrowned.




Fragments, on Love and Desire

I

…..You burn me…..

II

Remembering those things

We did in our youth…

…Many, beautiful things…

III

…Again and again…because those
I care for best, do me
Most harm…

IV

You came, and I was mad for you
And you cooled my mind that burned with longing…

V

Once long ago I loved you, Atthis,
A little graceless child you seemed to me

VI

Nightingale, herald of spring
With a voice of longing….

VII

Eros, again now, the loosener of limbs troubles me,
Bittersweet, sly, uncontrollable creature….

VII

………..but you have forgotten me…

VIII

You and my servant Eros….

IX

Like the sweet-apple reddening high on the branch,

High on the highest, the apple-pickers forgot,

Or not forgotten, but one they couldn’t reach…

X

Neither for me the honey

Nor the honeybee…

XI

Come from heaven, wrapped in a purple cloak…

XII

Of all the stars, the loveliest…

XIII

I spoke to you, Aphrodite, in a dream….

XIV

Yet I am not one who takes joy in wounding,

Mine is a quiet mind….

XV

Like the mountain hyacinth, the purple flower
That shepherds trample to the ground…

XVI

Dear mother, I cannot work the loom
Filled, by Aphrodite, with love for a slender boy…




Fragments, on the Muses

I

And when you are gone there will be no memory

Of you and no regret. For you do not share

The Pierian roses, but unseen in the house of Hades

You will stray, breathed out, among the ghostly dead.

II

The Muses have filled my life

With delight.

And when I die I shall not be forgotten.

III

And I say to you someone will remember us

In time to come….

IV

Here now the delicate Graces
And the Muses with beautiful hair…

V

It’s not right, lament in the Muses’ house…

….that for us is not fitting….

VI

Here now, again, Muses, leaving the golden…

VII

Surpassing, like the singer of Lesbos, those elsewhere…




‘I have a daughter, golden’

I have a daughter, golden,

Beautiful, like a flower -

Kleis, my love -

And I would not exchange her for

All the riches of Lydia......




‘Hesperus, you bring back again’

Hesperus, you bring back again

What the dawn light scatters,

Bringing the sheep: bringing the kid:

Bringing the little child back to its mother.




‘Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed’

Girls, you be ardent for the fragrant-blossomed

Muses’ lovely gifts, for the clear melodious lyre:

But now old age has seized my tender body,

Now my hair is white, and no longer dark.

My heart’s heavy, my legs won’t support me,
That once were fleet as fawns, in the dance.

I grieve often for my state; what can I do?
Being human, there’s no way not to grow old.

Rosy-armed Dawn, they say, love-smitten,

Once carried Tithonus off to the world’s end:

Handsome and young he was then, yet at last

Grey age caught that spouse of an immortal wife.




‘The Moon is down’

The Moon is down,

The Pleiades. Midnight,

The hours flow on,

I lie, alone.

John Keats - Biography

John Keats, 1795-1821

http://www.online-literature.com/keats/

Biography written by C. D. Merriman for Jalic Inc.

Copyright Jalic Inc. 2007. All Rights Reserved.


John Keats (1795-1821), renowned poet of the English Romantic Movement, wrote some of the greatest English language poems including "La Belle Dame Sans Merci", "Ode To A Nightingale", and "Ode On a Grecian Urn":

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 sayst,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in Moorgate, London, England, the first child born to Frances Jennings (b.1775-d.1810) and Thomas Keats (d.1804), an employee of a livery stable. He had three siblings: George (1797-1841), Thomas (1799-1818), and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803-1889). After leaving school in Enfield, Keats went on to apprentice with Dr. Hammond, a surgeon in Edmonton. After his father died in a riding accident, and his mother died of tuberculosis, John and his brothers moved to Hampstead. It was here that Keats met Charles Armitage Brown (1787-1842) who would become a great friend. Remembering his first meeting with him, Brown writes "His full fine eyes were lustrously intellectual, and beaming (at that time!)". Much grieved by his death, Brown worked for many years on his memoir and biography, Life of John Keats (1841). In it Brown claims that it was not until Keats read Edmund Spencer's Faery Queen that he realised his own gift for the poetic. Keats was an avid student in the fields of medicine and natural history, but he then turned his attentions to the literary works of such authors as William Shakespeare and Geoffrey Chaucer.

Keats had his poems published in the magazines of the day at the encouragement of many including James Henry Leigh Hunt Esq. (1784-1859), editor of the Examiner and to whom Keats dedicated his first collection Poems (1817). It includes "To My Brother George", "O Solitude! If I Must With Thee Dwell", and "Happy is England! I Could Be Content". Upon its appearance a series of personal attacks directed at Keats ensued in the pages of Blackwood's Magazine. Despite the controversy surrounding his life, Keats's literary merit prevailed. That same year Keats met Percy Bysshe Shelley who would also become a great friend. When Shelley invited the ailing Keats to stay with him and his family in Italy, he declined. When Shelley's body was washed ashore after drowning, a volume of Keats's poetry was found in his pocket.

Having worked on it for many months, Keats finished his epic poem comprising four books, Endymion: A Poetic Romance--"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever"--in 1818. That summer he travelled to the Lake District of England and on to Ireland and Scotland on a walking tour with Brown. They visited the grave of Robert Burns and reminisced upon John Milton's poetry. While he was not aware of the seriousness of it, Keats was suffering from the initial stages of the deadly infectious disease tuberculosis. He cut his trip short and upon return to Hampstead immediately tended to his brother Tom who was then in the last stages of the disease. After Tom's death in December of 1818, Keats lived with Brown.

Early one morning I was awakened in my bed by a pressure on my hand. It was Keats, who came to tell me his brother was no more. I said nothing, and we both remained silent for awhile, my hand fast locked in his. At length, my thoughts returning from the dead to the living, I said--'Have 'nothing more to do with those lodgings,--and 'alone too. Had you not better live with me?' He paused, pressed my hand warmly, and replied,-'I think it would be better.' From that moment he was my inmate. 

- Life of John Keats by Charles Armitage Brown, 1841

Around this time Keats met, fell in love with, and became engaged to eighteen year old Frances "Fanny" Brawne (1800-1865). He wrote one of his more famous sonnets to her titled "Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art". While their relationship inspired much spiritual development for Keats, it also proved to be tempestuous, filled with the highs and lows from jealousy and infatuation of first love. Brown was not impressed and tried to provide some emotional stability to Keats. Many for a time were convinced that Fanny was the cause of his illness, or, used that as an excuse to try to keep her away from him. For a while even Keats entertained the possibility that he was merely suffering physical manifestations of emotional anxieties--but after suffering a hemorrhage he gave Fanny permission to break their engagement. She would hear nothing of it and by her word provided much comfort to Keats in his last days that she was ultimately loyal to him.

Although 1819 proved to be his most prolific year of writing, Keats was also in dire financial straits. His brother George had borrowed money he could ill-afford to part with. His earning Fanny's mother's approval to marry depended on his earning as a writer and he started plans with his publisher John Taylor (1781-1864) for his next volume of poems. At the beginning of 1820 Keats started to show more pronounced signs of the deadly tuberculosis that had killed his mother and brother. After a lung hemorrhage, Keats calmly accepted his fate, and he enjoyed several weeks of respite under Brown's watchful eye. As was common belief at the time that bleeding a patient was beneficial to healing, Keats was bled and given opium to relieve his anxiety and pain. He was at times put on a starvation diet, then at other times prescribed to eat meat and drink red wine to gain strength. Despite these ill-advised good-intentions, and suffering increasing weakness and fever, Keats was able to emerge from his fugue and organise the publication of his next volume of poetry.

Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820) includes some of his best-known and oft-quoted works: "Hyperion", "To Autumn", and "Ode To A Nightingale". "Nightingale" evokes all the pain and suffering that Keats experienced during his short life-time: the death of his mother; the physical anguish he saw as a young apprentice tending to the sick and dying at St. Guy's Hospital; the death of his brother; and ultimately his own physical and spiritual suffering in love and illness. Keats lived to see positive reviews of Lamia, even in Blackwood's magazine. But the positivity was not to last long; Brown left for Scotland and the ailing Keats lived with Hunt for a time. But it was unbearable to him and only exacerbated his condition--he was unable to see Fanny, so, when he showed up at the Brawne's residence in much emotional agitation, sick, and feverish, they could not refuse him. He enjoyed a month with them, blissfully under the constant care of his beloved Fanny. Possibly bolstered by his finally having unrestricted time with her, and able to imagine a happy future with her, Keats considered his last hope of recovery of a rest cure in the warm climes of Italy. As a parting gift Fanny gave him a piece of marble which she had often clasped to cool her hand. In September of 1820 Keats sailed to Rome with friend and painter Joseph Severn (1793-1879, who was unaware of his circumstances with Fanny and the gravity of his health.

Keats put on a bold front but it soon became apparent to Severn that he was terminally ill. They stayed in rooms on the Piazza Navona near the Spanish Steps, and enjoyed the lively sights and sounds of the people and culture, but Keats soon fell into a deep depression. When his attending doctor James Clark (1788-1870) finally voiced aloud the grim prognosis, Keats's medical background came to the fore and he longed to end his life and avoid the humiliating physical and mental torments of tuberculosis. By early 1821 he was confined to bed, Severn a devoted nurse. Keats had resolved not to write to Fanny and would not read a letter from her for fear of the pain it would cause him, although he constantly clasped her marble. During bouts of coughing, fever, nightmares, Keats also tried to cheer his friend, who held him till the end.

John Keats died on 23 February 1821 in Rome, Italy, and now rests in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome, by the pyramid of Caius Cestius, near his friend Shelley. His epitaph reads "Here lies one whose name was writ in water", inspired by the line "all your better deeds, Shall be in water writ" from Francis Beaumont (1584-1616) and John Fletcher's (1579-1625) five act play Philaster or: Love Lies A-bleeding. Just a year later, Shelley was buried in the same cemetery, not long after he had written "Adonais" (1821) in tribute to his friend;

I weep for Adonais--he is dead!
O, weep for Adonais! though our tears
Thaw not the frost which binds so dear a head!
And thou, sad Hour, selected from all years
To mourn our loss, rouse thy obscure compeers,
And teach them thine own sorrow, say: "With me
Died Adonais; till the Future dares
Forget the Past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity!"

- Adonais by Shelley, 1821

Fanny Brawne married in 1833 and died at the age of sixty-five. English poet and friend of Brown's, Richard Monckton Milnes (1809-1885) wrote Life, Letters, and Literary Remains of John Keats (1848). During his lifetime and since, John Keats inspired numerous other authors, poets, and artists, and remains one of the most widely read and studied 19th century poets.

List of poems by John Keats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_poems_by_John_Keats

Odes

• Ode to a Nightingale
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
• Ode to Psyche
• To Autumn
• Ode on Melancholy
• Ode on Indolence

• Ode to Fancy
• Ode - (Bards of Passion and of Mirth)
• Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
• Robin Hood - To a Friend
• Ode to Apollo

Other poems by John Keats

• I stood tiptoe upon a little hill
• Specimen of an induction to a poem
• Calidore - a fragment
• To Some Ladies
• On Receiving a Curious Shell, and a Copy of Verses from the Same Ladies
• To - Georgiana Augusta Wylie, afterwards Mrs. George Keats
• To Hope
• Imitation of Spenser
• Three Sonnets on Woman
• Sleep and Poetry
• On Death
• Women, Wine, and Snuff
• Fill For Me a Brimming Bowl
• Isabella or The Pot of Basil
• To a Young Lady who Sent Me a Laurel Crown
• On Receiving a Laurel Crown from Leigh Hunt
• To the Ladies who Saw me Crown'd
• Hymn to Apollo
• The Eve of St. Agnes

Epistles

• To George Felton Mathew
• To My Brother George
• To Charles Cowden Clarke

Sonnets

• To My Brother George
• To - [Had I a man's fair form, then might my sighs]
• Written on the Day that Mr. Leigh Hunt left Prison
• How many bards gild the lapses of time!
• To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
• To G. A. W. [Georgiana Augusta Wylie]
• O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell
• To My Brothers
• Keen, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
• To one who has been long in city pent
• On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
• On Leaving Some Friends at an Early Hour
• Addressed to Haydon
• On the Grasshopper and Cricket
• To Koscuisko
• Happy is England! I could be content
• Sonnet on Peace
• Sonnet to Byron
• Sonnet to Chatterton
• Sonnet to Spenser

Endymion

• Book I
• Book II
• Book III
• Book IV

Lamia

• Lamia - part 1
• Lamia - part 2

Hyperion - A Fragment

• Hyperion - Book I
• Hyperion - Book II
• Hyperion - Book III

John Keats - The Human Seasons

Poet John Keats

John Keats, 1795-1821

Teignmouth, March 1818

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming high

Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness—to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

Background

Keats wrote this sonnet at Teignmouth in the second week of March 1818 and enclosed it in a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 13 March, writing: 'You know my ideas about Religion. I do not think myself more in the right than other people, and that nothing in this world is proveable. I wish I could enter into all your feelings on the subject merely for one short 10 Minutes and give you a Page or two to your liking. I am sometimes so very sceptical as to think Poetry itself a mere Jack a lanthen to amuse whoever may chance to be struck with its brilliance. As Tradesmen say every thing is worth what it will fetch, so probably every mental pursuit takes its reality and worth from the ardour of the pursuer--being in itself a nothing--Ethereal thing[s] may at least be thus real, divided under three heads--Things real--things semireal --and no things. Things real--such as existences of Sun Moon & Stars and passages of Shakspeare. Things semireal such as Love, the Clouds &c which require a greeting of the Spirit to make them wholly exist--and Nothings which are made Great and dignified by an ardent pursuit --which by the by stamps the burgundy mark on the bottles of our Minds, insomuch as they are able to "consec[r]ate whate'er they look upon". I have written a Sonnet here of a somewhat collateral nature--so don't imagine it an a propos des bottes.'

Keats wrote numerous minor poems while at Teignmouth and the first drafts are preserved in letters to Bailey, Reynolds and Haydon. This particular work was first published in Leigh Hunt's Literary Pocket-Book for 1819.

References 

John Keats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats 

Analysis 1

http://www.shvoong.com/books/poetry/1961426-sumary-john-keats-human-seasons/#ixzz1UuyRqcNB

The four stages of human life are like the four seasons of a year.Each stage has a compilation of lengthy dramas and stories of experiences from the cradle to the grave.It applies for both the human body and the human mind.For what is life here on earth? it is but a short journey we all undertake till our purpose is done.We all are formed from the dust and to the dust we shall all return one day.

The first stage of human life is the birth and the childhood days,which is compared to the season of Spring.This Season is believed to be the rebirth of Nature's life here on earth.It is characterized by warmth, spots of flora emerging everywhere on the naked ground,sounds of all types of birds in the air, movement of wild animals in the forest and very bright sunshine.This is the Season of optimism and hope.From birth till late childhood, life for every child is almost the beginning of a bright and a shiny future.Childhood is featured by innocence, physical stamina and vitality, tremendous urge for the outdoors and a tremendous appetite for fun and play.Activities have no limits.Each and everyone of us miss our childhood days.

The second stage of human life is Youth which is compared to the season of Summer. Summer is the season of fertility and immense harvest. It is marked by pleasantness,warm Summer rain and a blooming of vegetation.The fish of the waters swim adventurously in the gushing streams and rivers.The Earth itself is manifested with esteemed life.Similarly, Youth is marked by the end of Childhood innocence,beginning of self consciousness and high spirits of Romance.It is the peak and the glorious age of life.Each and everyone of us decides which path in life to take and the plans to settle with the best of everything.Beauty and attraction symbolizes the physical color of youth.

The Third stage of human life is Middle age which is compared to the season of Autumn.Autumn is characterized by beginning of dryness and slow deterioration of leaves of trees and plants.Everything around begins to fade away and begins to look shabby.The incoming chilling breeze blowing in all directions add to the gloom of nature.Similarly, Middle age is featured by a very slowly degrading physical strength,slight change in outward appearance,relaxed mood,and burdened with matured activities.By this time, all are treading towards old age.We see life differently and quite often worry about the generation,quite often our own off springs.The main feature of Middle age is Parenthood.We also learn to look back at our own lives and become very nostalgic.

The last stage is the Old Age which is compared to the season of Winter.This season is marked by extreme dryness and cold.The days are short and nights are long.Physical strength begins to fall to an all time low.Health is always a major issue.At this stage people tend to become very Spiritual and become mentally prepared for death.Winter ultimately closes the year just like old age closes the life on earth of a person to eternal rest.



Analysis 2

http://www.freewebs.com/mattsheahan/

John Keats writes The Human Seasons because he feels as though every season is comparable to a human emotion. He gives the reader a brief but in depth description of each season and shows how it pertains to a certain emotion humans feel. For example, “Spring, when fancy clear Takes in all beauty with an easy span:” (Keats, 2-3). Keats uses symbolism with the seasons to go beyond the literal meaning of spring, and infer that spring conveys a very easy and outgoing emotion. Spring is birth and life again from Winter. Summer describes a very youthful personality. It is a time of dreaming and exploring. Autumn portrays a relaxed personality. It is a time to sit back and take in the surrounding beauty. Winter is a distasteful personality, but is comforting because it allows people to look forward to the transition of Spring, or more positive personalities. In this poem, John Keats is able to look beyond the literal nature of seasons and provide a profound insight into human nature.



Anaylsis 3

http://mural.uv.es/romilo/trabajo03.htm

DIFFERENTS POINTS OF VIEW OF LIFE

The poem “The Human Seasons” was written by John Keats at Teignmouth and enclosed it in a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 13 March 1818. It was later included in his “Poems” published in 1819. (www.englishhistory.net)

The first two verses explain the contents of the poem and introduce the theme: he compares the four seasons of a natural year with the several stages of human life, also a natural process.

The main ideas of the poem are distributed in four steps, one for each stanza and also corresponding to each season of the year: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter.

The meaning is very clearly presented, as we can experience nowadays, that life is brief, temporary and that each period in our life has different feelings and thoughts.

In the first quatrain Keats introduces the topic. The way he expresses it is in two affirmative clauses; he doesn’t use any comparative particles, but the meaning is evident. Lifetime is a natural cycle, we are born, we grow up, we reproduce ourselves and die. In the same stanza Spring is described as very short and happy. This season is the first stage of the year and it’s compared to the first period of our lives: childhood. In that time everything is beautiful and “lusty”. Keats doesn’t mention any problem in this period.

The second quatrain refers to Summer and its influence on our feelings. Summer is the best time in our lives, we are still young, but as Keats mentions, we “ruminate thoughts”, that is, we have had some experience and we are able to think about what we did in our childhood. This is the so called maturity age. These thoughts can only be fed by sweet, tender childhood memories. Through these thoughts men can be totally happy, “unto heaven”. The age line for Summer could be from the 20s to the 40s.

Autumn covers the third stanza and includes spiritual experiences. In this stage human beings are mature, their tiredness is reflected in their acts. The words used are calm and relaxing: “quiet coves”, “closed wings”, “mist in idleness”, “threshold brook”. What the poet tries to express is that we have to admit that we are getting old, we have to be satisfied of our deeds and we just let time pass by.

Only in the last two verses Winter is mentioned. Death just happens once, it is everybody’s destiny and nobody can run away from it. The mortal nature of men is described here as “pale misfeature”. There are two different ways of interpreting it, on the one hand men grows old so beauty and health get reduced, but on the other hand we can imagine that it can be the description of the deformed body after death as everybody will end the same.

Keats died when he was only 25 so we cannot describe it as the poet’s experience because he couldn’t feel like an old person but maybe these years were intense and lived as a long lifetime. Independently of this, Keats doesn’t use any kind of humorous or ironic language. The poem is very objective. It is a comparison with Nature and its development is based on “facts” that continually occur.

Based on the analysis of the structure of the poem we can appreciate which life period is more important for Keats. Apart form the introduction, each season has its own length inside the poem. The extension of each part of the year is related to the relevance of the period that corresponds to human life. Autumn is the longest one, which reinforces the meaning of waiting for death.

The imagery is very clearly exposed: Spring describes childhood, Summer maturity, Autumn, when men wait the final moment and Winter the death.

When I first read the poem I was impressed because of its objectivity, no feelings are expressed, it is factual. The poem is addressed to a man but the addressee is humanity. I also liked the structure; direct at the beginning, then more elaborate. I totally agree with the poet. The poem is like a guide of life, taking part in daily problems and focusing on spiritual sensations and feelings.


Reference Bibliography

• Ford, B. The new Pelican Guide to English Literature.Vol. 5, From Blake to Byron. Penguin Books, Ltd. 1982, Harmondsworth.
• Wu, D. Romanticism, An Anthology with CD-Rom. Second Edition. Blackwell Publishing. 1998, Oxford, UK
• Bloom, H. & Trilling, L. The Oxford Anthology of English Literature. Romantic Poetry and Prose. Oxford University Press. 1973, New York.
• Bloom, H. Romanticism and Consciousness. Essays in Criticism. W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. 1970, New York.

John Keats - Bright Star

John Keats, 1795-1821
Begun April 1818, Completed February 1819, Publ 1838



Bright star, would I were stedfast 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 priestlike 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 stedfast, 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.




References

John Keats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
Bright Star - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_star,_would_I_were_steadfast_as_thou_art
Analysis - http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/star.html
Study Guide - http://www.brighthub.com/education/homework-tips/articles/52123.aspx
Study Guide - http://www.enotes.com/bright-star

John Keats - Ode to Autumn

John Keats, 1795-1821
Written May 1819, Publ January 1829



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-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed 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'erbrimmed 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-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed 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 cider-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 redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.




References

John Keats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
Ode to Autumn - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Autumn
John Keat's Six Odes of 1819 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats%27s_1819_odes
Analysis - http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/autumn.html
Study Guide - x

John Keats - Ode to Psyche

John Keats, 1795-1821
Written May 1819, Publ January 1829



O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?
I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:


’Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
His Psyche true!


O latest born and loveliest vision far
Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phœbe’s sapphire-region’d star,
Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
Nor altar heap’d with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
Upon the midnight hours;
no voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.


O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir’d
From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.


Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees
Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,
Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!




References

John Keats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
Ode to Psyche - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_to_Psyche
John Keat's Six Odes of 1819 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats%27s_1819_odes
Analysis - http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/psyche.html
Study Guide - http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides8/Psyche.html#Top

John Keats - Ode on Melancholy

John Keats, 1795-1821
Written May 1819, Publ January 1829



No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.


But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.


She dwells with Beauty – Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.




References


John Keats - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats
Ode on Melancholy - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ode_on_Melancholy
John Keat's Six Odes of 1819 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats%27s_1819_odes
Analysis - http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/melancholy.html
Study Guide - http://www.cummingsstudyguides.net/Guides8/Melancholy.html#Top