John Keats

I couldn't seem to find a general thread on Keats, though I'm sure there is one. I simply wanted to post a few poems as a reminder to return again and again to this wonderful artist. I think that any serious lover of beauty and life should be reading Keats at least on an hourly basis.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b04QQ...5D240E29992CAB

Some of these readings are good, some not so good but they do make enjoyable listening nonetheless. I find audio readings useful when I'm tired and can just sit back and listen, this time Friday night's are a prime example. I like the readings by Ted Hughes. I've always been a fan of Ted Hughes readings.

Anyway, get reading your Keats!

Every so often I get in a Keats mood and spent hours reading his collection/letters. I once had a goal of memorizing "Endymion" but realized that was a foolish gaol and set on memorizing "Ode to a Nightingale" instead.

I love Keats, and have for a long time - particularly the odes. I think To Autumn may well be one of the most perfect poems in the English language. Heck, my blog (such as it is) even bears the title 'Cloudy Trophies' after those fantastic closing lines of the Ode on Melancholy: 'His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,/ And be among her cloudy trophies hung.'

Excellent stuff. Yes 'To Autumn' is one of my all time favourite pieces - incredible, perfect! I was reading it today with a student (who loved it) which is what made pick up Keats later on today actually.

Keats... like chocolate covered fudge to the senses and fruit to the soul. Has there ever been a better combination of pleasure and philosophy in the English language? I could spend entire days doing nothing but reading To Autumn and not get sick of it. I wrote my own odes completely inspired by his... one certainly gains an appreciation for his perfection of... well, everything. That he accomplished all that he did while dying at 26 is all the more extraordinary. If I could go back and save one life from an early death it would be very close between Keats and Mozart.

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Originally Posted by Neely

...I simply wanted to post a few poems as a reminder to return again and again to this wonderful artist. I think that any serious lover of beauty and life should be reading Keats at least on an hourly basis...

...Anyway, get reading your Keats!

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By God, that does it!
I've seen enough references to Keats over the past 3 years while loitering around this place, it's time I gave him a try.
You didn't steer me wrong on Wilde, Neely, so I'll put trust in your Keats.
I will look in To Autumn

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Originally Posted by Gilliatt Gurgle

I will look in To Autumn

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If you do it right, you won't so much look in it, but live in it.

I often think of the words - probably incorrectly remembered -

When I fear that I may cease to be,
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain. -



Sorry if mis-quoted - but that's exactly what happened to him and gives that sonnet real punch.

I don't know, perhaps it is better that he died young leaving us full of regret, rather than staggering along into dinosaurhood like Wordsworth.

Fantastic. Morpheus hits it right on the head brilliantly, enjoy GG. I'm glad I stuck the thread up, I didn't expect someone to turn to Keats because of it (or it being the straw on the camel's back) but it was more than worth it if so. Yes that sounds right Mick, good point.

If I could go back and save one life from an early death it would be very close between Keats and Mozart.

I would have been torn between Mozart and Schubert... with Keats as a definite third.

Good call on Schubert; I forgot him, but it would still be very close for me.

In the British Caribbean we had a rather antiquated curriculum growing up and Keats, Yeats, and Wordsworth were a big part of literature class after our 11 plus (or was it 12 plus) primary school. I am thankful I was introduced so young.

"When I have fears" is very much my favourite. It best laments the reality of mortality. This sonnet is more of modernism than of romanticism- in way that lept out at me as a kid. It really applies to anytime, anyone, and anyplace.

Thanks for bringing this up Neely and to think he was in his early twenties when he created these pieces - more than a prodigy. I hope this is still in the British Primary/Secondary curriculum.



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For anyone who cares, I wrote an ode to Keats using his poems as a springboard (as well as Shakespeare, since Keats was such a huge fan). I'm not really fond of the piece myself (I hoped to merge the archaic with something more modern, and I failed in the latter goal), but this is as good a place as any for it:

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To Keats

“I have left no immortal work behind me – nothing to make my friends proud of my memory – but I have lov'd
the principle of beauty in all things, and if I had had time I would have made myself remember'd.”
– John Keats to Fanny Brown, Feb. 1820

No man knows aught of what he leaves behind;
    But you, immortal prince, I cry to think
You thought, while on your death-bed, that your mind
    Was not yet gleaned by your eternal ink;
As if we could forget the beauty wrought
    On urns, from melancholy, indolence,
        The vanishing of autumn; in the fall
Of gods, Hyperion and Psyche, brought
    Back into life, the past in present tense;
    And we’re all raptured out of perfect sense
        By nightingales that, like sweet death, still call.

Being a prisoner of that deceiving
    Elf—oftentimes it’s all that we can do.
How easy we forget there’s others grieving
    Like us, who’d welcome living death, like you.
So we remember, yes, But what’s the use
    To those deaf-mutes amongst the dead? Your thought
        Of being forgotten was your own, your last,
And though we praise your life and work, the sluice
    Of death drowns all the laurels that you sought,
    The thin-spun life is cut, the Gordian Knot,
      And everything is buried in the past.

Are you now standing all alone upon
    The shore of that wide world, still lost in thought,
Where love and fame to Nothingness are gone,
    Sunk far below the night? And have you brought
With you that fane, the sanctuary built
    Inside your brain; and is the casement
        Still opened, letting warmth and shadows in?
Or have the rosy buds begun to wilt,
    The gardener gone, his tools left in the basement,
    With everything awaiting their replacement
        In shambles, where the brightest torch had been?

No, no; the fire lives beneath the leaves
    That never burn—a phoenix set ablaze
May die, and turn to ash, but will conceive
    New life, reborn in every spark and gaze
That enters in the palace you created,
    Yielding its beauties to us willingly,
        Like harvests in a fall that never ends.
Remember thee? While memory is seated
    Inside this globe, aye poet; while the sea
    Still flows and eats the rocks from fallen screes,
        Aye prince. Though we’re apart, your art can mend

What days sicken and break—time out of joint;
    And is it truth or beauty that will heal?
You’d say that they’re conjoined twins, a point
  We question. What I know is what I feel;
You’d say that that’s enough; but lonely, lost,
    It’s hard to find that Gemini, or one
        Bright star, steadfast. The nightingale may sing,
But it’s a siren’s song, while we’re all tossed
    About the foam and spray. Yet let the sun
    Set. I’ll open your music box and shun
        The world; no need to change my state with kings.

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Thanks for that ^ Morpheus.

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Originally Posted by stlukesguild

If I could go back and save one life from an early death it would be very close between Keats and Mozart.

I would have been torn between Mozart and Schubert... with Keats as a definite third.

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I'd kick them all back down into the abyss to save Jane Austin for one more book