John Millington Keats

Transcription

1 5 th Year English Higher Level Gavin Cowzer John Millington Keats No part of this publication may be copied, reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission from The Dublin School of Grinds. Ref: 6/eng /h/gc/ John Millington Keats

2 EASTER REVISION COURSES Looking to maximise your CAO points? EASTER REVISION COURSE FEES: 6TH YEAR COURSES Easter is a crucial time for students to vastly improve on the points that they received in their mock exams. To help students take advantage of this valuable time, The Dublin School of Grinds is running intensive, exam-focused Easter Revision Courses. Each course runs for five days (90 minutes per day). All courses take place in Stillorgan, Co. Dublin. The focus of these courses is to maximise students CAO points. PRICE TOTAL SAVINGS 1st Course nd Course FREE rd Course th Course th Course th Course ,075 7th Course , ,465 8th Course 3RD & 5TH YEAR COURSES SPECIAL OFFER BUY 1 COURSE GET A 2ND COURSE FREE To avail of this offer, early booking is required as courses were fully booked last year. What do students get at these courses? minutes of intensive tuition per day for five days with Ireland s leading teachers. PRICE TOTAL SAVINGS 1st Course nd Course FREE rd Course th Course th Course th Course ,025 20% SIBLING DISCOUNT AVAILABLE. 99 Comprehensive study notes. Please call to avail of this discount. 99 A focus on simple shortcuts to raise students grades and exploit the critically important marking scheme. FREE DAILY BUS SERVICE FROM CITY CENTRE TO STILLORGAN 99 Access to a free supervised study room. For full information on our Easter bus service, see 3 pages ahead. To book, call us on or book online at NOTE: These courses are built on the fact that there are certain predicable trends that reappear over and over again in the State Examinations. 2 DSOG Easter pg A4 FINAL PRINT.indd 2 02/02/ :37

3 Keats Introduction Style Overview Poems To one who has been long in city pent Ode To A Nightingale On First Looking into Chapman s Homer Ode On A Grecian Urn When I have fears that I may cease to be La Belle Dame Sans Merci To Autumn Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art Conclusion Biography Sample Questions Sample Answer The Dublin School of Grinds 2 Deasy & Cowzer

4 SEEN POETRY Introduction to the Prescribed Poetry section: From the marking scheme: Students at Higher Level will be required to study a representative selection from the work of eight poets: a representative selection would seek to reflect the range of a poet s themes and interests and exhibit his/her characteristic style and viewpoint. Normally the study of at least six poems by each poet would be expected. (DES English Syllabus, 6.3) Note that, in the case of each poet, the candidates have the freedom of choice in relation to the poems studied. Note that there is not a finite list of any poet s themes and interests. Note that, in responding to the question set on any given poet, the candidates must refer to poem/s they have studied but they are not required to refer to any specific poem/s, nor are they expected to discuss or refer to all the poems they have chosen to study. In each of the questions in Prescribed Poetry the underlying nature of the task is the invitation to the candidates to engage with the poems themselves. Other points: Write a minimum of 4 A4 pages Realistically you should be referring to and quoting from a minimum of 4 poems by the poet. You can structure your answer in two ways: point by point or poem by poem. The Dublin School of Grinds 3 Deasy & Cowzer

5 But: If you do choose to go poem by poem avoid simply summarizing the poem. This structure of an answer often traps you into doing that. Constantly repeat the key words of the question. Use plenty of phrases like: I feel, it made me realize, I enjoyed, I think etc. You aim is to engage with the poems. You must show the examiner that these poems made you think, reflect and understand. Do that and the marks will follow. John Millington Keats Central to understanding Keats poetry is to see how his poetry in many ways epitomizes the Romantic Movement. This group was fascinated by the brevity of life in a world that was increasingly secular. Life seemed fleeting to this group. Keats wrote in a world where people were increasingly abandoning the certainties of religion. Without the comforting belief that this world was only preparation for the afterlife the romantics searched for a meaning to life. Keats settled on the beauty of art as a solution. While human existence is fleeting art can last through the ages. The second dominant theme in his poetry is the celebration of nature itself. Keats had an almost religious enjoyment of the beauty of the natural world. The heightened appreciation for the natural world is especially understandable given the industrial and agricultural revolutions that had begun transforming the British landscape. The romantic preoccupation with loss and change can in part be attributed to this. They longed for an imagined, vanishing world. The Dublin School of Grinds 4 Deasy & Cowzer

6 Keats is similar to Hopkins in that their poetry reflects a sensitive temperament capable of ecstatic happiness but also of crippling unhappiness. This is given voice in his poetry. An insigt into his personality: Keats wrote in a letter to his friend Richard Woodhouse, A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no Identity. Keats thought poets should remove their egos from their poetry, to better allow for poetry to happen unfiltered by personality. In other words Keats poetry therefore aims to establish universal thruths. The poetry is deliberately not personalized. Think of how personal Plath s or indeed Boland s poetry is. Arguably the aim is then the opposite of what we normally expect of poetry. The aim is not to reveal Keats own perspective but rather to achieve universality. Consequently we should all be able to share in the experiences that he tries to capture. Romantic Poetry The importance of the individual was central to the romantics view. They felt that the enlightment had gone to far in stressing the importance of rationality and science in making sense of the world. As such the imagination assumed a much greater significance for ths group of poets. Art and beauty need to be stressed as a counterpoint to science and reason. A key idea in Romantic poetry is the concept of the sublime. This term conveys the feelings people experience when they see awesome landscapes, or find themselves in extreme situations which elicit both fear and admiration. This is probably best exemplified by Keats Ode to a Nightingale. The Dublin School of Grinds 5 Deasy & Cowzer

7 Keats thought in terms of an opposition between the imagination and the intellect. In a letter to his brothers, in December 1817, he explained what he meant by the term Negative Capability : that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason (22 December). Keats suggested that it is impossible for us to find answers to the eternal questions we all have about human existence. Instead, our feelings and imaginations enable us to recognise Beauty, and it is Beauty that helps us through life s bleak moments. Life involves a delicate balance between times of pleasure and pain. The individual has to learn to accept both aspects: Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all/ye know on earth, and all ye need to know ( Ode on a Grecian Urn [1819]). The premature deaths of Byron, Shelley and Keats contributed to their mystique. As time passed they attained iconic status, inspiring others to make their voices heard. The Romantic poets continue to exert a powerful influence on popular culture. Generations have been inspired by their promotion of self-expression, emotional intensity, personal freedom and social concern. The Dublin School of Grinds 6 Deasy & Cowzer

8 Characteristic Themes in Keats poetry Transience Death The importance of beauty The power of the imagination The beauty of the natural world Symbols/ideas Elements of nature; seasonal changes reflecting mood and emotion; sunrise as a progression of time and change. The use of Pathetic fallacy is especially apparent. Autumn as a time of death and change. Art is represented by Urn Shadows: symbolic of the mind, darkness, inner-turmoil. The Dublin School of Grinds 7 Deasy & Cowzer

9 His characteristic style/technique Controlled, highly crafted poems. Keats was intrigued by the possibilities of poetry and as such he experimented with a number of forms. Similarly to Hopkins Keats reveled in the many possibilities of language especially in terms of musicality. His poetry is therefore highly memorable. Use of comparison and contrast is evident Rather than attempt to reveal his personal insight Keats aimed to achieve universal understanding and insight. Markedly sensuous poetry. For Keats life was to be celebrated because of the inevitability of death. This gives his poetry its tremendous sense of urgency. The Dublin School of Grinds 8 Deasy & Cowzer

10 To one who has been long in city pent To one who has been long in city pent, 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair And open face of heaven, to breathe a prayer Full in the smile of the blue firmament. Who is more happy, when, with heart's content, Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair And gentle tale of love and languishment? Returning home at evening, with an ear Catching the notes of Philomel, an eye Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, He mourns that day so soon has glided by: E'en like the passage of an angel's tear That falls through the clear ether silently. Main Points and Themes: This poem is central to Keats view of the world. He sees the natural world as being perfect. This is in contrast to the damage that we humans have done to this world. As such it is highly reminiscent of Hopkins work. The poem immediately shows evidence of Keats ability to control language. It is a highly crafted piece of writing that reveals his technical proficiency/ skill as a poet. A striking example of this can be seen in Hopkins control of the rhyming scheme of this poem. The opening visual image is skillfully handled. Keats use of sensuous imagery allows us to vividly imagine the scene. The description of the sky as a blue firmament is arresting. The Dublin School of Grinds 9 Deasy & Cowzer

11 There is a powerful contrast between the beauty of the day and the approaching night. Keats focuses our attention on one of his central themes- Transience. The Dublin School of Grinds 10 Deasy & Cowzer

12 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 Provençal 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. The Dublin School of Grinds 11 Deasy & Cowzer

13 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. The Dublin School of Grinds 12 Deasy & Cowzer

14 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? Main Points and Themes: Keats celebration of nature is clear again. Here Keats focuses our attention on the richness of life. There is a strikingly sensual quality to the poem This poem is a powerful expression of the artists wish to escape. The romantics felt themselves to be living in a post Christian world one in which the old certainties regarding heaven and hell could no longer be relied upon. As such Keats desire to belong to the world of art and in that way gain some form of immortality becomes more understandable. The Dublin School of Grinds 13 Deasy & Cowzer

15 The preoccupation with transience that typifies so much of Keats poetry reflects the poet s attempt to come to grips with the realty, and,perhaps the finality of death within the context of a largely post religious society. Overcome by the experience of listening to the nightingale. His 'heart aches' and initially he longs for the release of alcohol. The reason for this wish to escape into the oblivion of alcohol is so that he can forget "the weariness, the fever and the fret / Here, where men sit and hear each other groan." The alliterated 'F' sound draws our attention making the line memorable. Keats is challenging in terms of subject matter. In stanza VI Keats seems to glamourize death suggesting an almost suicidal impulse. He describes how he is and has been for 'many a time' "half in love with easeful death." Keats presents death as an escape. The romantics developed an almost unhealthy fixation on death. Emily Dickinson s poetry clearly reflects this. More recently Plath s dark imaginings can be traced back to their influence. This is clearly questionable material to have on our course? It is on our course to reflect how poetry, and indeed art, changes and develops. The song of the bird fades. Symbolically art/poetry fades therefore. The imagination, (described as the 'deceiving elf') "cannot cheat so well." art and imagination ultimately fail leaving the poet in confusion. He doesn't know night from day. this seems to contradict his most famous quote "beauty is truth truth beauty." This apparent contradiction reflects the confusion that Keats struggled with. The Dublin School of Grinds 14 Deasy & Cowzer

16 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 did I never 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. Main Points and Themes: This poem deals with an important aspect of poetry - inspiration itself. Keats famously wrote the poem in the early morning as a response to classical literature. He had spent an evening looking into one of the classics with one of his closest friends and wrote this poem in response to the experience. The reference to classical mythology to a modern audience seems perhaps especially anachronistic. However it is typical of the romantics. The emphasis on the classics could well be interpreted to be a snobbish elitism. By insisting on their classical education perhaps the poets were asking to be allowed take their part in polite society. The Dublin School of Grinds 15 Deasy & Cowzer

17 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-fring'd 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 loth? 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 hast 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. The Dublin School of Grinds 16 Deasy & Cowzer

18 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 this 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." Main Points and Themes: The title is arresting, Ode instantly establishes this as being an archaic form. However the poem goes beyond being a mere celebration of classical antiquity. Instead Keats moves from the beauty of the urn to consider the inevitable change or transience of our lives. The scene captured in art is one of fleeting change. Time has elapsed since the scene was recorded (or imagined) by the artist. The Dublin School of Grinds 17 Deasy & Cowzer

19 Keats skill as a poet is perhaps most evident in this poem. He succeeds in capturing the scene and bringing it to life in a way that no still image could. The sensuousness typical of Keats approach is again evident. The final two lines is central to our understanding of Keats. His assertion that beauty is truth, truth beauty points to the uncertainty inherent in modern secular life. Keats here is insisting that we cannot know anything beyond this. We can t know whether God or indeed an afterlife exists as such we should celebrate the beauty that is to be found in the natural world and indeed in sensual experience. The artist s role is to capture this beauty thereby immortalizing it. An apparent contradiction with Ode to a Nightingale. Imagination here is presented as powerful as opposed to weak. The sensuousness of the 4th stanza is striking. The colour green for the altar creates a visual image while "the heifer lowing at the skies" makes use of onomatopoeia to create an aural image. There is a further tactile element to the "silken flanks dressed with garlands." The Dublin School of Grinds 18 Deasy & Cowzer

20 When I have fears that I may cease to be When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain; When I behold, upon the night s starred 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. Main Points and Themes: Again we see Keats preoccupation with transience. The solution that Keats seems to be sharing with us is that he will aim to fill high piled books with his poetry. His fear is that he will not be able to capture all his ideas. What is interesting here is that romantic love is introduced but it is not presented as a solution to the fear that he feels. A dark poem then as Keats acknowledges that love and fame (as an artist) ultimately fail and sink away without trace. The Dublin School of Grinds 19 Deasy & Cowzer

21 La Belle Dame Sans Merci O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, Alone and palely loitering? The sedge has withered 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 cheeks 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 looked 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 sidelong would she bend, and sing A faery s song. She found me roots of relish sweet, The Dublin School of Grinds 20 Deasy & Cowzer

22 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 wild eyes With kisses four. And there she lullèd me asleep, And there I dreamed 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 Thee hath in thrall! I saw their starved lips in the gloam, With horrid warning gapèd wide, And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill s side. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing. The Dublin School of Grinds 21 Deasy & Cowzer

23 Main Points and Themes: This is somewhat different from the style of poetry we expect from Keats. Keats wrote in a letter to his friend Richard Woodhouse, A poet is the most unpoetical of anything in existence, because he has no Identity. Keats thought poets should remove their egos from their poetry, to better allow for poetry to happen unfiltered by personality. What similarities do you detect between the Knight in La Belle Dame Sans Merci and Keats s idea of a poet? The poet is only present to ask the character of the knight what it is that he is doing waiting by the lake. After that Keats allows the Knight speak for himself. The romantic in love with the Belle Dame is perhaps half in love with death itself. As such this can be taken to be a hugely dark poem in which Keats considers the inevitability of his own death. Concentrate on the imagery. Note the final image of the poem as an image that reflects Keats own presentiment (an intuitive feeling about the future, especially one of foreboding) of his death. The Dublin School of Grinds 22 Deasy & Cowzer

24 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; The Dublin School of Grinds 23 Deasy & Cowzer

25 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. Main Points and Themes The first stanza is a sensory glut, however mild and pretty mists and mellow fruitfulness may seem. The long vowel sounds in swell and plump perfectly capture the ripeness and fullness of the time of year. Read aloud the line needs to be delivered slowly so as the full implication of the words are felt. The poem s last stanza offers a mild gesture toward resolution in an everunfolding present tense. Though Keats doesn t make any overt attempt to reconcile autumn s tragic nature, that his consciousness makes music of the creatures noises reminds us that this is a poetic creation. As much as the poet has absorbed his senses in an essence apart from himself, making no evaluations or claims for transcendence, he has taken pains to rescue and preserve the season whole diminishment and all. Like the Greek figures on Keats s urn, the scene is forever unfolding, round and perfect in its paradox of action and stasis. It is always not yet winter. I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks, your Loveliness and the hour of my death, Keats wrote to his would-be love, Fanny Brawne, that summer. He had watched his own brother die of tuberculosis just a few months before, and his medical training would have made clear to him the likelihood of his The Dublin School of Grinds 24 Deasy & Cowzer

26 own fate. As he roamed the stubble-plains of Winchester in September, tubercular bacteria were already colonizing his lungs. A few months later, the illness worsened and his doctor advised him to curb (limit) his writing to preserve what was left of his vitality. That summer of 1819, the season of Keats s flourishing that culminated in To Autumn, would be the poet s own autumn. The poem starts by considering the season as one of fruitfulness. The second stanza sees Keats personify death as he considers the inevitability of the season. The reference to 'thy hoook' suggests the grim reaper. Autumn therefore brings with it death even if it is a death that is momentarily stayed. He imagines the moment that Autumn pauses before reaping the next furrow. Finally the poet gives way to thoughts of the inevitability of death in the last stanza (the soft-dying day, the full-grown lambs). The Dublin School of Grinds 25 Deasy & Cowzer

27 Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art 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. The Dublin School of Grinds 26 Deasy & Cowzer

28 Main Points and Themes: Keats celebration of the natural world is again evident. The beautiful image of the snow on the mountains anon the moors as the new soft-fallen mask is particularly striking. The almost breathless longing to be with his beloved is captured perfectly. That this then gives way to considering the impossibility of enjoying this moment as it cannot last is typical of Keats. The final line of the poem is therefore central to understanding the importance of death in Keat s dark poetry. The influence of Shakespeare is especially evident in this poem. The title itself seems Shakespearian with the archaic word art. The Dublin School of Grinds 27 Deasy & Cowzer

29 To Finish up The celebration of the restorative power of nature is a motif in his work. The concern with transience is especially marked in his work. Time passing inevitably brings death and decay. In an increasingly secular world this is especially important. His poetry is especially sensuous as he tries to capture in full the human experience. Aural imagery is especially important in poems such as 'To Autumn' and 'Ode to a Grecian Urn.' The nightingale as a reoccurring image or motif in his poetry. Representative of poetry and therefore art. Symbolism is extensively used. Pathetic fallacy especially. Douglas Bush has said that no other English poet would rank as high as Keats if he had died as young not William Shakespeare, John Milton, or Keats s greatest contemporary, William Wordsworth. Whereas other poets, especially his Romantic contemporaries, have gone in and out of critical fashion, Keats s reputation has endured since shortly after his death. Keats followed the Shakespearean model of impersonality in art; that is, the surrendering of self to the fullest development of character and object, and it is this impersonality, coupled with its intensity that makes his poetry readily accessible to a wide range of modern readers. The reader does not have to re-create Keats s time, empathize with Romantic norms and beliefs, or identify with the poet s unique biographical experiences to appreciate his poetry fully. As he said of his poetic model, Shakespeare, Keats was as little of an egotist as it was possible to be, in the Romantic period, at least, in the creation of art. The Dublin School of Grinds 28 Deasy & Cowzer

30 Keats celebration of the restorative power of nature in particular was something that I really connected with. The melancholic aspect of his poetry forced me to stop and consider the sadness that is present in so many people s existence. Reading further into his biography I felt that Keats approach - to celebrate the beauty to be found in art and in nature especially- was in fact hugely inspirational. Being exposed to Keats poetry has made me consider deeply and appreciate the wonder of everyday existence. I have always enjoyed poetry. Perhaps as a consequence I especially liked the lyrical qualities of Keats poetry as it reminded me of the poetry I read when I was starting to read poetry. However, reading Keats has proved to be a much more challenging experience, especially in terms of the dark subject matter of his work. I loved how well-crafted the poems are, especially in the control of rhyme and rhythm. The Dublin School of Grinds 29 Deasy & Cowzer

31 Typical questions on Keats Keats poetry explores dark themes, but it is always rewarding for the reader due to his powerful use of language. Keats poetry explores a wide range of experiences but he does so in language that is highly satisfying Paper Two > Section 3 > Question B2 The Dublin School of Grinds 30 Deasy & Cowzer

32 Biography John Keats Born in 1795, his father managed, and later inherited through marriage a London livery stable. Lost both parents at a young age. (Father aged 8 and mother aged 14) Well educated through friendship with son f a schoolmaster. Apprenticed to a surgeon but would give up on it as a career. In 1818 while looking after his dying brother Tom he noticed symptoms of tuberculosis (coughing up blood). He had fallen in love and gotten engaged to Fanny Brawne but now knew that he could not hope to have a relationship with her. He died in Italy in the spring of 1821 having moved there in the hope that the climate might help his lungs. He was just 25 years old. A thing of beauty is a joy forever. Published just 54 poems but widely regarded as one of, if not the greatest of the romantic poets.. The Dublin School of Grinds 31 Deasy & Cowzer

33 Poet Details John Keats, who died at the age of twenty-five, had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. He published only fifty-four poems, in three slim volumes and a few magazines. But at each point in his development he took on the challenges of a wide range of poetic forms from the sonnet, to the Spenserian romance, to the Miltonic epic, defining anew their possibilities with his own distinctive fusion of earnest energy, control of conflicting perspectives and forces, poetic selfconsciousness, and, occasionally, dry ironic wit. In the case of the English ode he brought its form, in the five great odes of 1819, to its most perfect definition. In his own lifetime John Keats would not have been associated with other major Romantic poets, and he himself was often uneasy among them. Outside his friend Leigh Hunt's circle of liberal intellectuals, the generally conservative reviewers of the day attacked his work, with malicious zeal, as mawkish and bad-mannered, as the work of an upstart "vulgar Cockney poetaster" (John Gibson Lockhart), and as consisting of "the most incongruous ideas in the most uncouth language" (John Wilson Croker). Although Keats had a liberal education in the boy's academy at Enfield and trained at Guy's Hospital to become a surgeon, he had no formal literary education. Yet Keats today is seen as one of the canniest readers, interpreters, The Dublin School of Grinds 32 Deasy & Cowzer

34 questioners, of the "modern" poetic project-which he saw as beginning with William Wordsworth to create poetry in a world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart. Beyond his precise sense of the difficulties presented him in his own literary-historical moment, he developed with unparalleled rapidity, in a relative handful of extraordinary poems, a rich, powerful, and exactly controlled poetic style that ranks Keats, with the William Shakespeare of the sonnets, as one of the greatest lyric poets in English. Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats's four children. At the age of eight Keats entered Enfield Academy and became friends with young Charles Cowden Clarke, the fifteen-year-old son of the headmaster. Clarke remembered an outgoing youth, who made friends easily and fought passionately in their defense: "He was not merely the `favorite of all,' like a pet prize-fighter, for his terrier courage; but his high-mindedness, his utter unconsciousness of a mean motive, his placability, his generosity, wrought so general a feeling in his behalf, that I never heard a word of disapproval from any one, superior or equal, who had known him." He was not a shy, bookish child; one of his schoolmates, Edward Holmes, later said that "Keats was not in childhood attached to books. His penchant was for fighting. He would fight any one." On the night of 15 April 1804, when Keats had been in school less than a year, an accident occurred that would alter his life and proved to be the first in a series of losses and dislocations that would pursue him throughout his brief life, certainly contributing to his mature sense that the career of the artist was an exploration of art's power to bring solace and meaning to human suffering. His father was seriously injured when his horse stumbled as he rode home, and he died the next day. The shock to the family was great, emotionally and financially. Within two months of her husband's death, Frances Keats had moved the children to her mother's home and remarried; but the marriage soon proved disastrous, and it appears that, after losing the stables and some of her inheritance to her estranged husband, William Rawlings, the poet's mother left the family, perhaps to live with The Dublin School of Grinds 33 Deasy & Cowzer

35 another man. She had returned by 1808, however, broken and ill; she died of tuberculosis (as had her brother just a few months before) in March John became the oldest male in his family, and, to the end of his life, felt a fiercely protective loyalty to his brothers and sister, Fanny Keats. His most thoughtful and moving letters on poetry's relation to individual experience, to human suffering and spiritual development, were written to his brothers. At school, Keats drew closer to the headmaster, John Clarke, and his son, Cowden. He became, in fact, one of Clarke's favorite pupils, reading voraciously and taking first prizes in essay contests his last two or three terms. In some part this new academic interest was a response to his loneliness after his mother's death. Keats's sense of the power and romance of literature began as the Clarkes encouraged him to turn his energy and curiosity to their library. Cowden Clarke recalled his reading histories, novels, travel stories; but the books "that were his constantly recurrent sources of attraction were Tooke's `Pantheon,' Lamprière's `Classical Dictionary,' which he appeared to learn, and Spence's `Polymetis.' This was the store whence he acquired his intimacy with the Greek mythology." On his own, Keats translated most of the Aeneid and continued learning French. Literature for him was more than a dreamy refuge for a lonely orphan: it was a domain for energetic exploration, "realms of gold," as he later wrote, tempting not only as a realm of idealistic romance but also of a beauty that enlarges our imaginative sympathies. All through his life his friends remarked on his industry and his generosity: literature for Keats was a career to be struggled with, fought for, and earned, for the sake of what the poet's struggle could offer humankind in insight and beauty. This impression recurs often in accounts of Keats, this pugnacity of one who fought his way into literary circles, and this compassion for others that justifies the literary career. Of course, at this point, when Keats was only fifteen or sixteen, a literary career was not a serious thought. In 1810 Alice Whalley Jennings, Keats's grandmother, was seventy-five, and in charge of the four orphaned children, John, George (then thirteen), Tom (eleven), and Fanny (seven). She had inherited a considerable sum from her husband, John Jennings (who died in 1805), and in order to ensure the The Dublin School of Grinds 34 Deasy & Cowzer

36 children's financial future turned to Richard Abbey, a tea merchant who, on the advice of her attorney, she appointed to act as trustee. Most of Keats's later financial misery can be traced to this decision. If Abbey was no villain, he was nevertheless narrow-minded and conventional, and, where money was concerned, niggardly and often deceitful. He dispensed the children's money grudgingly and often lied or freely interpreted the terms of the bequest: it was not until 1833, years after Fanny Keats came of age, that she finally forced a legal settlement. It has been estimated that by the time of Keats's death in 1821 either Abbey had withheld from him, or Keats had failed to discover, about 2000, a considerable inheritance (in those days 50 per annum was at least a living wage, and would provide a comfortable existence). Keats left Enfield in 1811, and, perhaps at Abbey's urging though Clarke remembered it as Keats's choice he began to study for a career as a surgeon. He was apprenticed to a respected surgeon, Thomas Hammond, in a small town near Enfield, Edmonton, where his grandmother lived. We know little of Keats's life during these years , other than that Keats assisted Hammond and began the study of anatomy and physiology. Surgery would have been a respectable and reasonable profession for one of Keats's means: unlike the profession of medicine, the job of surgeon in Keats's day did not require a university degree. A surgeon, licensed by examination, was a general practitioner, setting bones, dressing wounds, giving vaccinations. Keats always maintained he was "ambitious of doing the world some good." It is likely that he began his career with enthusiasm, but living in the small rooms over the surgery, Keats grew restless and lonely; he began to wander the woods and walk the four miles to Enfield to see the Clarkes. He completed his translation of the Aeneid, and, according to Cowden Clarke, he "devoured rather than read" books he borrowed: Ovid's Metamorphosis, John Milton's Paradise Lost, Virgil's Eclogues, and dozens of others. But the book that decisively awakened his love of poetry, indeed shocked him suddenly into self-awareness of his own powers of imagination, was Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene. This was a turning point. Certainly this close teacher-pupil friendship with Cowden Clarke, these evenings at the headmaster's table, and the long late-night rambles discussing books borrowed from the library, were crucial in making John Keats a The Dublin School of Grinds 35 Deasy & Cowzer

37 poet. His friend Charles Brown believed Keats first read Spenser when he was eighteen, in 1813 or 1814: "From his earliest boyhood he had an acute sense of beauty, whether in a flower, a tree, the sky, or the animal world; how was it that his sense of beauty did not naturally seek in his mind for images by which he could best express his feelings? It was the `Fairy Queen' that awakened his genius. In Spenser's fairy land he was enchanted, breathed in a new world, and became another being...." Soon, wrote Brown, he "was entirely absorbed in poetry." (Brown subsequently struck out the word entirely.) Clarke recalled Keats's exuberant joy, "he ramped through the scenes of that... purely poetical romance, like a young horse into a Spring meadow." Some time in 1814 Keats wrote his first poem, "In Imitation of Spenser." What is remarkable about this first poem is its vitality, its appropriation of the Spenserian rhyme scheme and richly compressed imagery to evoke a romantically voluptuous dream world. It is a youthful piece. But the poetic ear is acute, the natural description delights in itself, and even when clumsy the verse dares with naive persistence to draw attention to the power of poetic image to set a dreamy scene ("Ah! could I tell the wonders of an isle / That in that fairest lake had been / I could e'en Dido of her grief beguile." And of course he does attempt to tell). Few English authors have ever, in fact, had as much direct observation and experience of suffering as John Keats. Until the early summer of 1816 he studied medicine at Guy's Hospital, and he did so well he was promoted to "dresser" unusually quickly. His duties involved dressing wounds daily to prevent or minimize infection, setting bones, and assisting with surgery. He took to the work well, lodging with two older students at 28 St. Thomas Street, attending lectures by the foremost surgeon of the day, Astley Cooper, as well as courses in anatomy and physiology, botany, chemistry, and medical practice. Yet by the spring of 1816 he was clearly becoming restless, even defensive, about poetry. He was increasingly excited by the new modern poetry of Wordsworth (whose 1815 Poems Keats had obtained just as he entered Guy's), its naturalism and direct appeal to the secular imagination so different from Spenser's romance. One night in early October, Clarke invited Keats to his rooms in Clerkenwell. He especially wanted to show Keats a volume that was being shown around Hunt's The Dublin School of Grinds 36 Deasy & Cowzer

38 circle, a 1616 folio edition of George Chapman's translation of Homer. The two friends pored over the volume until six in the morning, and when Keats reached home he sat down immediately to compose a sonnet, titled in manuscript "On the first looking into Chapman's Homer." With obvious pride and excitement he sent it to Clarke by a post that reached him at ten that morning. Surely Keats felt, as critics today would agree, that this was the most perfect poem, the most beautifully written and sustained verse, he had yet written. As he would so often, Keats wrote the "Homer" sonnet in response to the power and imaginative vision of another poet. And again, that power is perceived as an absence, a gap between Keats's small voice or the concrete experience of any individual and the sublime limitlessness of a great and distant imagination (this tension reappears in the more complex relation of the poet to the Grecian urn and the nightingale). Unlike his first sonnets, inspired by the natural charm of Hunt's sonnets, this sonnet is based on a structural principle that he would later bring to perhaps its greatest fulfillment in English poetry in his odes, the expression of the irresolvable contrarieties of experience in the interplay of verse elements quatrain, octave and sestet, rhymes, words, and even sounds. In this sonnet, the energy and excitement of literary discovery Keats, in reading Homer, feels not bookish pleasure but the awe of a conquistador reaching the edge of an uncharted sea is presented as direct emotion, not, as it had been in the epistles, a disabling and selfconscious pose. The emotion is, for the first time, sustained and controlled throughout the verse, with a sureness of diction, and even sound, that never falters: for example, the sense of openness to a vast sea of wonder is suggested by long vowels ("wild," "surmise," "silent"), tapering off to hushed awe in the weak syllables of the final word, "Silent, upon a peak in Darien." As published (with line 7 altered, in The Examiner, 1 December 1816), the sonnet takes its place with Wordsworth's and some of Keats's own, as among the finest of the nineteenth century. Severn remarked that during these days he noticed the development of Keats's power of sympathy, of a kind of imaginative identification valued in Keats's day as the hallmark of poetic sensitivity (William Hazlitt's teachings reflect this view). Keats was moved to an unusual degree toward almost sensory identification with things around him: "Nothing seemed to escape him, the song of a bird and the The Dublin School of Grinds 37 Deasy & Cowzer

39 undertone of response from covert or hedge, the rustle of some animal...," said Haydon. "The humming of a bee, the sight of a flower, the glitter of the sun, seemed to make his nature tremble!" This power of overcoming self through loving the world's beauty became a crucial doctrine for Keats he found his feeling here confirmed by Hazlitt's theories of imagination that evolved into a moral principle of love for the good. This doctrine would become Keats's ultimate justification for the aesthetic life, and it would be implied even as early as Endymion. For Keats, characteristically, this quest for a transcendent truth can be expressed (or even conceived of) only in the terms of an intense, imaginative engagement with sensuous beauty: "I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth whether it existed before or not for I have the same Idea of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential Beauty." The imagination's "sublime," transcending activity is a distillation and intensification of experience. Writing to his brothers at the end of December, he criticized a painting by Benjamin West: "there is nothing to be intense upon; no women one feels mad to kiss; no face swelling into reality. the excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with Beauty & Truth Examine King Lear & you will find this examplified throughout...." The intensity of beauty in art here is not identical to the intensity of actual lifealthough there is a tendency in all Romantic theory to equate them. Keats emphasizes that the artist remains aloof from single perspectives on life, because truly to paint life's intensity is to reveal its fiercely dual nature and the precariousness of all attempts to fix or rationalize it: "it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Achievement especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed so enormously I mean Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact & reason." Keats's best-known doctrine, Negative Capability, implies an engagement in the actual through imaginative identification that is simultaneously a kind of transcendence. The artist loses the Selfhood that demands a single perspective or The Dublin School of Grinds 38 Deasy & Cowzer