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John keats. Leaving Certificate Poetry. John keats : Biography. John keats : Biography.
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John keats Leaving Certificate Poetry
John keats: Biography Keats’ poetry career spanned less than four years. It began in 1816, when he decided not to be a surgeon and lasted until late 1819. In all, Keats wrote about 150 poems, many of his best remembered works were written in the last year of his life.
John keats: romantics The works of many early 18th century poets celebrated the power of reason and rational thought over emotion and imagination. But as the century progressed and the negative effects of the industrial revolution on the lives of ordinary people became clearer, some poets began to question the direction society was taking. These poets considered the city to be an ugly, soul-destroying environment and celebrated the beauty and power of nature. Such poets came to be known as the Romantics and Keats is considered one of the greatest of these. His poems are full of lush and rich descriptions of the natural world and they celebrate the power of imagination over reason.
To one who has been long in city pent • The poem describes how pleasant it can be to spend a day in the country if you have been stuck in the city for a long time: “Tis very sweet to look into the fair / And open face of heaven”. • The country is presented as a place of beauty and tranquillity. The tall grass that sways gently in the breeze offers the visitor a “pleasant” secluded place to relax. • Keats presents the countryside as a loving, benevolent place that warmly welcomes and embraces those who come to visit. The bright blue sky is compared to a smiling “face”.
To one who has been long in city pent • The person who spends a day in the countryside will experience great joy and Keats cannot imagine a greater pleasure. • Keats believes the experience will inspire a religious or spiritual response – a “prayer”. There is a sense in which God is smiling back at the person Keats imagines taking this trip to the country: the “open face of heaven”. • It is here that someone discovers their “heart’s content”.
To one who has been long in city pent • The journey back to the city will bring mixed emotions – the person will hear the song of the nightingale: “catching the notes of Philomel” and will feel sad that their day is over. • Keats compares the swift and silent passage of time to the tear of an angel falling from the heavens: “passage of an angel’s tear / that falls through the clear ether silently”. • This is a mournful image and seems to suggest the heavens are sympathetic to the feelings of the person returning to the city. The tear falling from heaven is also a clear contrast to the blue sky described in the opening lines.
THEME: nature • Keats was typical of Romantic poets in his worship of the natural world. And his almost overwhelming love of nature is evident throughout this poem. He describes the awe-inspiring beauty of the sky, a sight which inspires one to “breathe a prayer”. • The natural world is presented as a loving, caring environment. The poet presents the sky as the smiling and “open face of heaven”. He also describes the great pleasure of sinking into long grass and hiding away from the troubles of the world for a while. • As such, the country is presented as an idyllic escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. It is a place that offers the weary city-dweller much needed rest and respite.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Nature Imagery: • Like so many of Keats’ poems, this poem contains a number of memorable images of the natural world. Here Keats concentrates on the sky. • He captures the wonderful expanse of the sky when he describes it as an “open face” and speaks of the “smile of the blue firmament”. • In the poem’s closing lines Keats describes a cloud drifting across the sky like a boat sailing upon the ocean: “the sailing cloudlet’s bright career”
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Reference to Older Times: • Like many Romantic poets, Keats’ poetry makes frequent references to characters from Greek myths and legends. Here the poet refers to the song of the nightingale as the “notes of Philomel”. According to Greek mythology, Philomel was the daughter of an Athenian king who was turned into a nightingale in order to protect her from a cruel and vengeful man.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Personification and Simile: • Keats personifies the sky, likening it to a smiling face. The face is said to be “fair” and “open”. • The final two lines of the poem involve a simile. Keats compares the passage of time to the “passage of an angel’s tear”.
Keats Question: “Keats’ poems frequently express both the pain and beauty of human existence in strikingly powerful and memorable language.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of John Keats on your course. Write the paragraph on ‘To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent’ you would include if you were answering the above question.
On first looking into chapman’s homer BACKGROUND: • In this sonnet Keats records his pleasure and excitement at discovering George Chapman’s translations of the great Greek poet Homer. • Homer was famous for his two epic poems The Iliad and The Odyssey. Keats could not read ancient Greek so it was only through Chapman’s translations that he could explore these epics, which are often considered to be the greatest works of Western poetry.
On first looking into chapman’s homer • The poem’s opening lines present reading poetry as a form of travel and exploration – a great poet’s collected work is like a country they have painstakingly constructed over years. • Each poet’s country is a “realm of gold”, a place of great wealth and imaginative richness. Reading a poet’s work is like visiting and exploring that country and Keats is vey well-travelled in this regard because he has read the work of many great poets: “Much have I travelled”
On first looking into chapman’s homer • Homer’s work is also described as a realm or “demesne”. The country he created is particularly vast and expansive. Homer’s realm dwarfs even the large or “goodly” countries constructed by other great European poets. • The air or “serene” in his realm is extremely crisp and pure, suggesting how after thousands of years his poems retain their energy and freshness. • Keats has often heard about Keats’ amazing epics: “Oft of one wide expanse had I been told”. Yet he has never been able to read them due to his lack of ancient Greek. Now, however, Keats has discovered Chapman’s translations: “I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold”. Chapman’s skill as a translator has allowed him to experience the “wide expanse” of Homer’s realms.
On first looking into chapman’s homer • Keats describes himself as an astronomer or “watcher of the skies” who discovers a new planet. • Keats also describes the Spanish explorer Cortez discovering the Pacific Ocean when travelling through Panama (Keats is actually mistaken here – he is confusing Cortez with Balboa who actually discovered the Pacific). • Keats paints wonderful picture of the discovery – he describes Cortez standing “silent” on the mountain peak and how he “stares” at this new ocean, suggesting even a seasoned commander is stunned and moved by the magnificent sight.
On first looking into chapman’s homer • Keats is clearly as thrilled by Chapman’s translations. They permit him for the first time to really discover Homer’s poetry. And this excites him as much as if he’s discovered a new planet. • He feels the kind of exhilaration Cortez must have experience when he stood on that Panama hill before a freshly-discovered ocean.
Theme: celebrating artworks • ‘Chapman’s Homer’ is one of several poems where Keats celebrates the joy and pleasure of reading (it is also referred to in ‘Long in City Spent’). Reading poetry, the poem suggests, can be a thrilling voyage of discovery. Exploring a new poet’s work is like exploring a new country or island brimming with riches and fantastic sights. • The poem also celebrates the incredible excitement of discovering a great new author. For Keats discovering Homer through Chapman’s translation is as thrilling as discovering a new planet or ocean. The poem, then, emphasises the emotional intensity with which Keats responded to works of arts. Most of us don’t share this incredible sensitivity but we may get an idea of it when we discover a new film or book or song that we love.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Nature Imagery: • Keats was a typical Romantic poet in how he littered his work with images of the natural world. As a tribute to Homer, who wrote a great deal about sea voyages, the poem features a great deal of water imagery; we see “western islands”, the swimming planet, the great sailor Cortez and the Pacific Ocean itself. • This poem centres on epic images of discovery in nature. Cortez explores new lands and astronomers explore the heavens. The act of reading is also seen as an exploration.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • References to Older Times: • Keats was greatly interested in the classical works of ancient Greece. We see this in the reference to the Greek god Apollo and in how he pays tribute to Homer, the very greatest of the Greek poets.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Metaphor: • The poem’s first eight lines are dominated by an extended metaphor that compares the activity of reading to the activity of travel. A memorable feature of the poem is how it depicts European poetry as a king of “map”. • Another metaphor is used to described the vividness and intensity of Chapman’s translation. Chapman’s book is compared to someone speaking out “loud and bold”, suggesting the confidence he brought to the task.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Sound Effects: • Throughout the poem Keats makes extensive use of assonance to create a pleasant verbal music. • We see this in line 4 with its repeated ‘o’ sound: “Apollo hold”. This is also clear in line 11: “stout Cortez”.
Keats Question: “Keats’ poems frequently express both the pain and beauty of human existence in strikingly powerful and memorable language.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of John Keats on your course. Write the paragraph on ‘On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer’ you would include if you were answering the above question.
When I have fears that I may cease to be • Keats compares his poetic imagination to a field that’s alive with growth and fertility that’s “teeming” with grain at harvest time. • However, Keats worries that he will “cease to be” before he has the chance to use his pen to “glean” or gather these ideas. His mind might be brimming with ideas but he is terrified that he will die before he has had the chance to turn these ideas into poems. • Yet Keats is also humble about his poetic ability, describing how poems are written with help from the “magic hand of Chance”. He presents poetic inspiration as something mystical, beyond the poet’s own control.
When I have fears that I may cease to be • Keats was filled with a burning desire to express the beauty and mystery of nature in his verses. Yet he worries he will “never live” to achieve this, that he will die before writing poems that adequately capture the night-time clouds: “That I may never live to trace / Their shadows”. • This poem also reveals that there is a woman for whom Keats feels great affection and desire. He is never happier than when he is gazing upon the beauty of this “fair creature”. • He fears he will die soon and will no longer be able to study this beautiful woman’s face: “And when I feel, fair creature of an hour, / That I shall never look upon thee more”.
When I have fears that I may cease to be • Keats experiences fears relating both to “Fame” and “Love”. He worries he will die before he can maximise his artistic potential and win lasting fame as a poet. He also worries that he will die before he can properly experience love. • He responds to these fears by going to the “Shore of the wide world”. We can imagine him walking along a beach or cliff as he meditates upon the fears the fill his mind: “I stand alone and think”. • Standing on the seashore allows him to focus on the “bigger picture”. When he contemplates the wide world and vast ocean that surrounds him and the vastness of time and space, his own concerns seem petty and unimportant. His fears regarding love and fame become “nothing” in his mind: “Till Love and Fame to Nothingness do sink”
THEME: artistic creativity • Keats, like other Romantic poets, recognised artistic creativity as one of the greatest human traits, regarding it as something sacred and mystical. • The poem emphasises the pride and delight Keats takes in his own poetic gifts. He stresses the great fertility of his imagination which is “teeming” with ideas. He seems confident that if he lives long enough he will be able to create a high pile of books filled with his poetic words. He also seems confident that inspiration’s “magic hand” will allow him to capture nature’s beauty in his verses. • However, the poem also stresses that artistic creation requires hard work. The poet’s ideas and inspirations have to be painstakingly worked on and transformed into poems, jut as the harvest must be gathered with back-breaking toil.
THEME: nature • Keats was typical of the Romantic poets in his worship of the natural world. In this poem he celebrates the beauty of the starry night sky and describes his burning ambition to capture such beauty in his poetic works. • The poem also celebrates the bounty of nature at harvest time and the constancy of the waves washing against the shore. • The poem also suggests that Keats somehow “sees” nature differently than the rest of us. Where the rest of us merely see a “night sky” he observes a “starr’d face”, where the rest of us see clouds, he sees “symbols of a high romance”.
THEME: death • Death very much forms the background music of Keats’ works. This poem centres on a terrifying race against time. Keats is haunted by the possibility that death will claim him before he can make the most of his talent and truly relish the pleasures of romantic love. Sadly, his fears turned out to be all too accurate. • Keats responds to these fears by standing on the ocean edge and meditating as he watches the waves come in. The ocean has been washing against the shore for millions of years before we were born and will be doing so for millions of years after our deaths. From the “wide world’s” point of view we exist for a blink of an eye so what does it matter if die tomorrow or in sixty years time? • Eventually the poet’s fears come to seem like nothing at all. His hopes and dreams seem to “sink to nothingness” as he contemplates the greater scheme of things.
THEME: death • This response has been described as extremely bleak. Yet it can also be read as a form of mindfulness or meditation. As he contemplates the ocean the poet finds a form of acceptance, coming to terms with his place in the universe, and learns to look beyond his own ambitions, fears and frustrations. • Perhaps the most important message of this poem is that time is of the essence. Each human being has dreams and hopes, goals and ambitions they would like to achieve. It is important, however, that we seize the day and begin to realise our potential as soon as possible, for we never know when we might suddenly “cease to be”.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Metaphors: • The poem’s opening lines centre on an extended metaphor, which compares the act of poetic creativity to that of gathering the harvest. This metaphor skilfully shows the abundance of Keats’ imagination, likening it to a fertile filed teeming with “full ripen’d grain”. • Keats also uses a metaphor to describe the night sky, comparing it to a “face” which is occasionally hidden from view by the cloud formations that blow across it: “the night’s starr’d face”.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Nature Imagery: • This poem is rich with Keats’ usual nature imagery. The opening lines present us with several images of ripeness and plenty: the fields alive with full-ripened grain, the “rich” garners full to bursting with the harvested crops. These images skilfully suggest the “teeming” fertility of Keats’ imagination, which is rich with ideas that are ripe or ready to be turned into poems. • Another powerful nature image occurs in lines 5 to 6, where Keats depicts the star-filled night sky. Yet perhaps the poem’s most melancholic and memorable image is that of the poet standing alone on “the Shore / Of the wide world” as he meditates on the notions of love, death and poetic fame.
Style: Language, tone, structure etc. • Sound Effects: • This poem is rich in assonance and alliteration. Alliteration is particularly evident in line 4 with the repeated ‘g’ and ‘r’ sounds: “rich garners the full ripen’d grain”. • Assonance occurs throughout the poem. We see it in line 3 with its repeated ‘e’ sound. Lines 5 to 8 also feature a pleasant verbal music, generated by the repeated ‘a’ sounds. We see this in the phrase “starr’d face”.
Keats Question: “Keats’ poems frequently express both the pain and beauty of human existence in strikingly powerful and memorable language.” Discuss this statement, supporting your answer with reference to the poetry of John Keats on your course. Write the paragraph on ‘When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be’ you would include if you were answering the above question.
Ode to a nightingale SETTING: • It is a summer’s evening. The poet is relaxing in a garden when he hears a nightingale singing. The bird is flitting around a place of “beechen green”, suggesting it contains many leafy beech trees. The poet pictures how as night descends their branches must cast countless shadows on the woodland floors: “shadows numberless”.
Ode to a nightingale THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: • The nightingale sings in a “full-throated” manner. It performs with such volume, energy and passion that it fills the little woods with melody, making it a “melodious plot” of ground. • According to the poet, the bird sings with “ease” and its song seems to celebrate summer-time. However, we should remember that the nightingale is famed for the melancholic nature of its singing.
Ode to a nightingale THE POET’S REACTION TO THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: • Keats’ reaction to the nightingale’s singing is a complex one: • Listening to its beautiful song gives him happiness and pleasure. • At the same time its singing fills him with feelings of sorrow and melancholy: his sense of mind is “pained”. • It also fills him with a sense of drowsiness and numbness – he feels as if he’s consumed the deadly poison hemlock and it is shutting down his body. • He feels as if he’s drained a glass of liquid opiates and is sinking into a sedated mental blankness: “Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains”.
Ode to a nightingale THE POET’S REACTION TO THE NIGHTINGALE’S SONG: • What causes these feelings of sadness and numbness? Keats stresses that it isn’t “envy” of the nightingale’s “happy lot” among the trees. He claims instead that the singing makes him “too happy”. It’s as if the nightingale’s joyous performance threatens to overwhelm him with emotion. • Keats’ reaction to the nightingale’s song may seem bizarrely over the top. However, we can perhaps understand where he is coming from. Listening to playlist of sad but beautiful songs can produce a similar mix of emotions: happiness in the song’s beauty; sadness at the sorrowful tones or a sense of mental relaxation that might lead to sleep.
Ode to a nightingale THE POET ADMIRES THE NIGHTINGALE: • The poet is conscious of the bird’s “happy lot” and according to the poet, the nightingale has “never known” the troubles we human beings endure. Instead it sings with “ease”, relishing the serenity of the woodland it inhabits. • The fact that Keats describes the nightingale as “light-winged” further reinforces our impression of its carefree existence: “Thou light-winged Dryad of the trees”. This phrase suggests not only the bird’s agility but also its freedoms from the cares and worries that weight down humans: our “weariness”, “fever” and “fret”.
Ode to a nightingale THE POET WISHES TO JOIN THE NIGHTINGALE: • Keats is distressed by the fact that youth cannot last. Each of us must face the frailty and indignities of old age: “Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes”. Human life is depicted as being full of pain while the nightingale’s days are carefree and happy. • It is hardly surprising then that Keats wishes to leave this cruel world behind. He wants to slip away quietly from his present existence, to “leave the world unseen” and join the nightingale in its dark and peaceful plot of woodland. While he cannot physically join the nightingale in tis home, he can do so in his imagination.
Ode to a nightingale THE POET LONGS FOR MAGICAL WINE: • Keats longs to drink a glass of wine that has come from the Hippocrene, which was a magical fountain in Greek mythology. According to legend anyone who drank from it would be filled with poetic inspiration. He believes that drinking some of this wine will boost his imagination allowing him to experience the vision of the nightingale’s home he so desires. • Keats provides intensely vivid descriptions of this magical liquid, describing how it how it matures for centuries in cool caverns that erosion has “delved” deep into the earth.
Ode to a nightingale THE IMAGINATIVE VISION BEGINS: • Keats has no such magical drink to help his powers of imagination, instead he must rely on his mind’s natural resources if the vision is to take place. He worries whether his “dull brain” is up to the task but the poet is determined the vision will occur and that he will imaginatively join the nightingale: “Away! away! for I will fly to thee”. • In line 35 he declares that the vision he has long for has occurred and that in his imagination he is “Already with” the nightingale. The poet uses a wonderful metaphor to describe this process. He claims that poetry has carried him into the woodland with its invisible or “viewless” wings.
Ode to a nightingale THE VISION CONTINUES: • Lines 36 – 50 are devoted to this incredibly detailed “vision” of the woodland. It features twisting paths that are overgrown with moss: “winding mossy ways”. It’s a place of green gloominess: “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet”. Keats uses a metaphor to describe how the woodland is only faintly illuminated, saying the summer breeze carries the moonlight and starlight down from heaven and disperses it among the forest’s pathways: “But there is no light, / Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown”. This is an exquisite piece of writing that captures the softness of this starlight. • His sense of smell, however, is fully engaged by the woodland’s gorgeous odours. The “seasonable” of May lends a different “sweet” smell to each plant and flower. They “embalm” the woodland air, filling it with mild and balmy fragrances.
Ode to a nightingale THE VISION CONTINUES: A DEATH WISH • In his vision Keats continues wandering through the woods, still listening to the nightingale’s song: “Darkling, I listen”. For a long time, he says, he has been attracted to the notion of dying which will be an “easeful” release from the trials and difficulties of life. This night in particular strikes him as a good time to die: “Now more than ever seems it rich to die”. • Keats uses an inventive metaphor to describe this ‘death wish’, comparing it to a courtship or romance. He has been “half in love” with death and had “courted” death with poems the way someone might court a beautiful woman: “Call’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme”. He has implored death to gently terminate his existence by stopping his breathing: “To take into the air my quiet breath”. • He imagines that the nightingale would continue singing after his death: “Still wouldst thou sing”and that its song would become his funeral “requiem”.
Ode to a nightingale THE VISION CONTINUES: THE BIRD’S IMMORTAL SONG • This nightingale, he claims, is an “immortal Bird”. It has existed for thousands of years and it will never die: “Thou wast not born for death”. • He imagines that thousands of years ago the nightingale was present in the empires of the ancient world, maybe in Egypt, Greece or Rome. Its song delighted both emperors and court jesters. He imagines that the nightingale’s song might also have been heard by Ruth, a character from the Bible. • Keats claims that the nightingale has even travelled to “faery lands”, to mysterious and supernatural countries humans can never visit.
Ode to a nightingale THE VISION ENDS: • Then Keats’ vision comes to an abrupt end. It’s as if the word “forlorn” reminds him of the real world with all its woes and difficulties and snaps him out of his happy woodland fantasy. • His mind had been filled with an incredibly rich and detailed fantasy of the woodland but suddenly he is aware only of his “sole self”. The nightingale begins to move away from the piece of woodland near Keats’ garden and he listens to its melancholic singing become fainter as it moves deeper into the countryside. • The poem concludes with Keats wondering about the strange mental journey he has just taken. Was it simply a daydream – a “waking dream” or should it be thought of as a “vision” because of its intensity? We are left with a feeling that this was far more than a daydream and was more of a “vision”.
THEME: NATURE • This poem highlights the poet’s particular sensitivity to nature and how his responses to nature’s beauty seem far more intense and heightened than those of his fellow human beings. This is especially evident in his intensely atmospheric vision of the woodland. • We sense the relish Keats takes in the woodland’s aromas. He delights in nature’s variety, in listing the range of plants and flowers that thrive. Even insects thrill him, as witnessed by his rapturous description of the buzzing flies. The beauty of the night sky is also celebrated in the memorable personification whereby Keats depicts the moon as the “Queen” of the night and the stars as her fairy servants.
THEME: NATURE • Yet Keats’ unusual sensitivity to the natural world is nowhere more evident than in his reaction to the nightingale’s singing. The nightingale’s song fills the poet with seemingly contradictory emotions: he is happy, melancholy and numb all at the same time. He describes how the bird’s singing makes him “too happy”, as if his system is overwhelmed with emotion. • ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ also demonstrates how the poet regards nature’s beauty as a consolation for the strains and difficulties of human life. This world may be a place of suffering but the poem suggests that there is ease and pleasure to be found in the beauty of nature.
THEME: ARTISTIC CREATIVITY • Keats, like the other Romantic poets of his generation, recognised artistic creativity as one of the greatest human traits , as something mysterious and sacred. Keats’ poetic imagination allows him to join the nightingale in his woodland home, flying there on poetry’s invisible wings. • ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is perhaps above all a celebration of the power of the imagination. Keats, it must be remembered, never actually physically enters the forest. Instead he simply imagines what the nightingale’s leafy home must be like. Lines 35 – 50 show Keats constructing an intensely detailed and vivid depiction of an environment that exists only in his mind. • The poem, then, shows how Keats retreats from the pain and suffering of the real world into an imaginary haven. Keats’ “fancy” creates a refuge to which he can flee in his “waking dream” and leave this troubled world behind.
THEME: DEATH • Death is a constant presence in Keats’ work. This is a poem that takes a fairly negative view of life. The world is depicted as a place full of moaning and groaning: “here where men sit and hear each other groan”. • Our lives, according to Keats, are dominated by sickness, worry and tiredness. He suggests that to even think about the human condition is to be filled with “sorrow / And leaden-eyed despairs”. • However, the poet is also fascinated by the notion of death and dying: “For many a time I hath been in love with easeful death”. He seems especially pleased by the thought of slipping away peacefully on this particular night, with the song of the nightingale ringing in his ears. Like many Romantic poems, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ presents the notion of dying young as something glamorous and attractive.
