BS: Anyone for Keats?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: KarenH
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 06:59 PM

Tempted to comment because somebody said nobody is trying to help with the original question.


"Anyone got any smart ideas for getting a surefire grip on what the buggers on about?"

I studied some of Keats's poems at A-Level and can still quote chunks of some of them. I quite enjoyed some of them.

Maybe try some of the more famous shorter ones first:

Ode to Nightingale, Ode to Autumn, Ode on Grecian Urn.

But I can't help with the original question as phrased, I don't think. Not least because I don't know whether you can get a 'surefire' grip on what any poem is about.

All you can do is arrive at an interpretation.

You may be asking too much of yourself in setting out to like or appreciate all of his poetry, if that is what is on your bucket list, or to get definite answers to questions like 'what is this poem about? if that is what you are doing. Maybe it is best to find a few poems of his that do appeal, and then try to work out what it is about them that appeals.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 08:51 PM

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?
Have ye tippled drink more fine
Than mine host's Canary wine?
Or are fruits of Paradise
Sweeter than those dainty pies
Of venison? O generous food!
Drest as though bold Robin Hood
Would, with his maid Marian,
Sup and bowse from horn and can.

I have heard that on a day
Mine host's sign-board flew away,
Nobody knew whither, till
An astrologer's old quill
To a sheepskin gave the story,
Said he saw you in your glory,
Underneath a new old sign
Sipping beverage divine,
And pledging with contented smack
The Mermaid in the Zodiac.

Souls of Poets dead and gone,
What Elysium have ye known,
Happy field or mossy cavern,
Choicer than the Mermaid Tavern?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 20 Jul 18 - 08:54 PM

No! those days are gone away
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

         No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

         On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

         Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her—strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

         So it is: yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string!
Honour to the bugle-horn!
Honour to the woods unshorn!
Honour to the Lincoln green!
Honour to the archer keen!
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood-clan!
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: KarenH
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 09:27 AM

Since we are quoting poems; the last poetry book I bought was by Attila the Stockbroker.

This one's called "Farageland". It appears to be linked to a song I don't know called 'Garageland' by a band I have at least heard of called 'The Clash'. It is set to a tune by 'Strummer'. I'll give you a brief taster:


Bol***** to Farage and that Tory defector

Two pinstriped ba****** from the stockbroking sector.


Working folk get conned, they think UKIP are all right


But Nigel and his friends woud p*** on them from a great height.


A short piece by Attila called 'A Tale of Three Bushes' may amuse some, if not, I apologise:

Thatcher met Bush senior
Blair met Bush no hoper
But May has drawn the short straw
She just met Bush groper.

Sorry, no tune indicated for that one.

I should add, for fear of giving a wrong impression, that I like other types of poetry too: the Metaphysicals, some Larkin, some Emily Dickinson.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: KarenH
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 10:14 AM

Here's a nicer poem, Seamus Heaney, about a kid facing mortality and various other things about life, rather as Keats does in some of his poems:

Late August, given heavy rain and sun
For a full week, the blackberries would ripen.
At first, just one, a glossy purple clot
Among others, red, green, hard as a knot.
You ate that first one and its flesh was sweet
Like thickened wine: summer's blood was in it
Leaving stains upon the tongue and lust for
Picking. Then red ones inked up and that hunger
Sent us out with milk cans, pea tins, jam-pots
Where briars scratched and wet grass bleached our boots.
Round hayfields, cornfields and potato-drills
We trekked and picked until the cans were full,
Until the tinkling bottom had been covered
With green ones, and on top big dark blobs burned
Like a plate of eyes. Our hands were peppered
With thorn pricks, our palms sticky as Bluebeard's.

We hoarded the fresh berries in the byre.
But when the bath was filled we found a fur,
A rat-grey fungus, glutting on our cache.
The juice was stinking too. Once off the bush
The fruit fermented, the sweet flesh would turn sour.
I always felt like crying. It wasn't fair
That all the lovely canfuls smelt of rot.
Each year I hoped they'd keep, knew they would not.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 21 Jul 18 - 08:47 PM

Oh! My last two posts were by Keats.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 09:02 PM

The Robin Hood ditty
demonstrates that it is possible
to take a break from emulating the ancient classics
and indulge in wit and irony for a while.
Even if you have observers and confidantes
thinking of you as a doomed romantic poet.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: Rapparee
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 09:47 PM

They spent too much time with things like Scott's The Lay of the Last Minstrel (not what you think and you have a dirty mind!) and Radcliffe's The Italian, or, The Confessional of the Black Penitents -- not to mention Mary Shelley and Jane Austen and Fanny Burney! Of course, Chatterton (the "Marvelous Boy") had all the Romantic trappings, including suicide.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 10:49 PM

Does that include, I wonder, the afore-mentioned
Richard Monckton Milnes, Lord Houghton?
Regarding Keats,
we have Milnes to thank for writing something
like a biography --
and for cementing, as it were,
the Doomed Romantic Poet thing for Keats.

A mixed blessing, the Milnes gesture.
Anyone who works, as Keats did,
as a "dresser" preparatory to working as a "surgeon"
(a Regency-era "surgeon" is NOT a physician with an MD)
is made of sterner stuff
than his early death would lead one to believe.
The fellow must have been a fighter.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 22 Jul 18 - 11:02 PM

Steve Shaw pointed out something apropos,
in quoting Wordsworth.

Wordsworth was initially of importance to Keats.
But Keats, maturing at frightening speed beyond his years
(at moments he reminds me of Mozart),
not only outgrew Leigh Hunt (who remained his friend)
but he had second thoughts about Wordsworth as well.

And Big Al Whittle put his finger on something.
Keats came of age during the Regency era
when the English were congratulating themselves
on succeeding where the French aristocracy had failed,
in keeping entire classes of their fellow men
from getting ideas above their station.
Keats was not only a humanist
but in his own way someone who rebelled against the status quo.
Now, THAT might get young people's attention.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: KarenH
Date: 23 Jul 18 - 06:22 AM

The 'romantic' poets had a thing about nature: they felt that it could give you the experience of 'the sublime', a mixture of fear and awe. The feeling of the 'sublime' was said to be a powerful feeling. Writers and artists tried to evoke it.


It comes into Frankenstein in the scenes high up in the mountains, a fine place for experiencing the sublime.

For some this feeling about reflected the fact that God made nature (especially Gerard Manley Hopkins mentioned above). Sometimes it had more of a pagan feel.

Wordsworth's 'Daffodils' is an example of this romantic sensibility towards nature, perhaps.

Is there something of all this in Keats? Ode to a Nightingale, perhaps? The song of the nightingale (itself perhaps a symbol for poetry as well as a natural phenomenon) transports the poet into to a particular psychological state, which he describes for us. Though it doesn't last.

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 thy 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
Cooled a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt 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 tomorrow.

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,
Clustered 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 covered 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,
Called him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain---
To thy high requiem become a sod

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charmed 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 famed 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?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 08:23 PM

And what does anyone/everyone believe
Keats meant by the words in his epitaph:

"writ on water" ?

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: beardedbruce
Date: 24 Jul 18 - 10:37 PM

Actually:

"THIS GRAVE CONTAINS ALL THAT WAS MORTAL OF A YOUNG ENGLISH
POET WHO ON HIS DEATH BED IN THE BITTERNESS OF HIS HEART
AT THE MALICIOUS POWER OF HIS ENEMIES DESIRED THESE
WORDS TO BE ENGRAVEN ON HIS TOMB STONE

"Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water"


The intent was to indicate that once the water dried up, he would be nameless and forgotten, IMO.

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: MikeL2
Date: 27 Jul 18 - 09:51 AM

Hi

Many years ago when I was in the 6th Form We had to study John Keats' Ode to Autumn for English Lit in the School Certificate as it was then.

All I can remember is

   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

Amazingly I actually passed....the book we had to study was Pride & Prejudice Again I scraped through. I have read the book again recently and watched a video of it. Did enjoy it then and still don't.

Cheers

Mike

Subject: RE: BS: Anyone for Keats?
From: keberoxu
Date: 07 Aug 18 - 01:23 PM

Sonnet

Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition [you have been warned. -keb.]

The church bells toll a melancholy round,
Calling the people to some other prayers,
Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares,
More hearkening to the sermon's horrid sound.
Surely the mind of man is closely bound
In some black spell; seeing that each one tears
Himself from fireside joys, and Lydian airs,
And converse high of those with glory crown'd.
Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, --
A chill as from a tomb, did I not know
That they are dying like an outburnt lamp;
That 'tis their sighing, wailing ere they go
Into oblivion; -- that fresh flowers will grow,
And many glories of immortal stamp.

-- Sunday evening, Dec. 24, 1816, according to Tom Keats' copy-book.