John Keats was a key English Romantic poet born in London in 1795. Often compared to contemporaries like Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, his works have become timeless classics. Despite facing early criticism and having a limited audience during his lifetime, Keats’ influence has endured.
He contracted tuberculosis in 1819 and ultimately succumbed to the disease in Italy in 1821 at the age of 25. His short life left behind a lasting legacy of emotional and vivid poetry.
‘Ode to a Nightingale,’ written in 1819, is one of John Keats’ six famous odes. It’s the longest, with eight 10-line stanzas, and showcases Keats’ signature style of vivid imagery and emotional depth, exploring themes like beauty and mortality.
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:
‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’ is a poignant reflection of Keats’ own life and emotions, encapsulating themes of unrequited love, illness, and social barriers.
O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing.
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn,’ an ekphrastic poem, is one of John Keats’ “Great Odes of 1819.” “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all,” a line that captures the essence of Keats’ confidence in the power of art.
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:
‘Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art’ is one of John Keats’ best-loved poems. It uses a star as an image of steadfastness to depict the enduring nature of a lover’s heart.
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,
This poem captures John Keats’ awe upon reading George Chapman’s English translation of Homer, likening the experience to discovering “realms of gold.”
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.
One of Keats’ lesser-known odes, this piece is a heartfelt dedication to the Greek goddess Psyche, celebrating her as the most beautiful among gods and goddesses.
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:
‘To Autumn’ stands as one of Keats’ most image-rich and skillful odes, offering a sumptuous description of the fall season.
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;
‘In drear-nighted December’ by John Keats describes the way memories of happier and warmer times impact one’s emotions in the coldest hours of December.
In drear nighted December,
Too happy, happy tree,
Thy branches ne'er remember
Their green felicity—
‘O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell’ by John Keats is a fourteen-line sonnet that is contained within one block of text. It expresses the speaker’s intention to find somewhere peaceful, in a valley, amongst trees, bees, and deer to live out his days.
O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell,
‘Bards of Passion and of Mirth’ by John Keats is one of the poet’s early odes. In it, Keats confirms that bards, or authors, have two souls, with one rising to heaven, and the other staying on earth.
Bards of Passion and of Mirth,
Ye have left your souls on earth!
Have ye souls in heaven too,
Doubled-lived in regions new?
‘On the Sea’ is a traditional sonnet by John Keats that delves into the sea as a force both musical and enigmatic, capable of lifting spirits and easing mental anguish.
It keeps eternal whisperings around
Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell
Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell
‘A Song About Myself’ is a joyous poem in which a young boy travels, writes poetry, catches fish, and learns about himself and others.
There was a naughty boy,
A naughty boy was he,
He would not stop at home,
He could not quiet be-
‘A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever’ is famous as the first book in John Keats’ epic, ‘Endymion.’ It is based on the tale of Endymion, whose beauty was of such joy to Selene that it immortalized him for the rest of his days.
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Give me your patience, sister, while I frame
Exact in capitals your golden name;
Or sue the fair Apollo and he will
Rouse from his heavy slumber and instill
‘Ode on Indolence’ is one of the “Great Odes of 1819” written by the second-generation romantic poet John Keats. This poem centers on the concept of a speaker’s indolent thoughts.
One morn before me were three figures seen,
With bowèd necks, and joinèd hands, side-faced;
And one behind the other stepp’d serene,
In placid sandals, and in white robes graced;
‘Ode on Melancholy,’ while not amongst the most lauded of the Odes, is perhaps the most uplifting and hopeful of all of Keat’s Odes. Keats addresses the reader, a sufferer of Melancholy, and tells him not to worry.
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;
In ‘On Fame’, John Keats illustrates the nature of fame and presents its poetic definition to the readers by using suitable metaphors.
Fame, like a wayward girl, will still be coy
To those who woo her with too slavish knees,
But makes surrender to some thoughtless boy,
And dotes the more upon a heart at ease;
‘On Seeing the Elgin Marbles’ by John Keats is a poem about mortality. The speaker observes the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum and is moved by their power.
My spirit is too weak—mortality
Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
And each imagined pinnacle and steep
Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
The Poetry of earth is never dead:
When all the birds are faint with the hot sun,
And hide in cooling trees, a voice will run
From hedge to hedge about the new-mown mead;
If by dull rhymes our English must be chain’d,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
Fetter’d, in spite of pained loveliness;
Let us find out, if we must be constrain’d,
‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ by John Keats is a celebration of an idealized love between two beautiful and heroic characters. it’s written in Spenserian.
St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold;
The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
‘To Hope’ by John Keats depicts the power and influence that Hope, as a personified force sent by God, can have on a struggling world.
When by my solitary hearth I sit,
And hateful thoughts enwrap my soul in gloom;
When no fair dreams before my "mind's eye" flit,
And the bare heath of life presents no bloom;
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.
O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
Son of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We call thee fruitful, and that very while
A desert fills our seeing's inward span:
John Keats, the poet of ‘When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be’, was obsessed with death. In a certain way, his obsession with death is not completely surprising at all.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
‘You say you love; but with a voice’ also known by the refrain, “O love me truly!” deals with a speaker’s physical passion for his beloved. It is believed to be John Keats’ earliest love poem.
You say you love ; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun's, who singeth
The soft Vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth-
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