He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world
'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of
the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long
to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world
of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and
suggest.
'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of
the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long
to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world
of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and
suggest.
Keats
chaste.
_ Cf.
ll.
12, 113.
l. 188. _covert_, hiding. Cf. _Isabella_, l. 221.
PAGE 94. l. 198. _fray'd_, frightened.
l. 203. _No uttered . . . betide. _ Another of the conditions of the
vision was evidently silence.
PAGE 95. ll. 208 seq. Compare Coleridge's description of Christabel's
room: _Christabel_, i. 175-83.
l. 218. _gules_, blood-red.
PAGE 96. l. 226. _Vespers. _ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See
Introduction, p. 213.
l. 237. _poppied_, because of the sleep-giving property of the
poppy-heads.
l. 241. _Clasp'd . . . pray. _ The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.
_missal_, prayer-book.
PAGE 97. l. 247. _To wake . . . tenderness. _ He waited to hear, by the
sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.
l. 250. _Noiseless . . . wilderness. _ We picture a man creeping over a
wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast
or other frightful thing.
l. 257. _Morphean. _ Morpheus was the god of sleep.
_amulet_, charm.
l. 258. _boisterous . . . festive. _ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.
l. 261. _and . . . gone. _ The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted
to express a dying-away of sound.
PAGE 98. l. 266. _soother_, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use
of the word. Sooth really means truth.
l. 267. _tinct_, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.
l. 268. _argosy_, merchant-ship. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 9,
'Your argosies with portly sail. '
PAGE 99. l. 287. Before he desired a 'Morphean amulet'; now he wishes to
release his lady's eyes from the charm of sleep.
l. 288. _woofed phantasies. _ Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf.
_Isabella_, l. 292.
l. 292. '_La belle . . . mercy. _' This stirred Keats's imagination, and
he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).
l. 296. _affrayed_, frightened. Cf. l. 198.
PAGE 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne's poem, _The Dream_:--
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.
l. 300. _painful change_, his paleness.
l. 311. _pallid, chill, and drear. _ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.
PAGE 101. l. 323. _Love's alarum_, warning them to speed away.
l. 325. _flaw_, gust of wind. Cf. _Coriolanus_, V. iii. 74; _Hamlet_,
V. i. 239.
l. 333. _unpruned_, not trimmed.
PAGE 102. l. 343. _elfin-storm. _ The beldame has suggested that he must
be 'liege-lord of all the elves and fays'.
l. 351. _o'er . . . moors. _ A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.
PAGE 103. l. 355. _darkling. _ Cf. _King Lear_, I. iv. 237: 'So out went
the candle and we were left darkling. ' Cf. _Ode to a Nightingale_, l.
51.
l. 360. _And . . . floor. _ There is the very sound of the wind in this
line.
PAGE 104. ll. 375-8. _Angela . . . cold. _ The death of these two leaves
us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy;
whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first
introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor,
and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON
MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.
These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the
early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the
same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together,
they seem to sum up Keats's philosophy.
In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal
principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast;
in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.
The first-written of the four, the _Ode to a Nightingale_, is the most
passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon
after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and
himself nursed to the end.
He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world
'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of
the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long
to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world
of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and
suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but
of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue
to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the
thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our
feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had
left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty
roused by the bird's song, he longed for death rather than a return to
disillusionment.
So in the _Grecian Urn_ he contrasts unsatisfying human life with art,
which is everlastingly beautiful. The figures on the vase lack one thing
only--reality,--whilst on the other hand they are happy in not being
subject to trouble, change, or death. The thought is sad, yet Keats
closes this ode triumphantly, not, as in _The Nightingale_, on a note of
disappointment. The beauty of this Greek sculpture, truly felt, teaches
us that beauty at any rate is real and lasting, and that utter belief in
beauty is the one thing needful in life.
In the _Ode on Melancholy_ Keats, in a more bitter mood, finds the
presence, in a fleeting world, of eternal beauty the source of the
deepest melancholy. To encourage your melancholy mood, he tells us, do
not look on the things counted sad, but on the most beautiful, which are
only quickly-fading manifestations of the everlasting principle of
beauty. It is then, when a man most deeply loves the beautiful, when he
uses his capacities of joy to the utmost, that the full bitterness of
the contrast between the real and the ideal comes home to him and
crushes him. If he did not feel so much he would not suffer so much; if
he loved beauty less he would care less that he could not hold it long.
But in the ode _To Autumn_ Keats attains to the serenity he has been
seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn
day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit
receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral
from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the
momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour,
concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds of autumn--its
music, as beautiful as that of spring. Hitherto he has lamented the
insecurity of a man's hold upon the beautiful, though he has never
doubted the reality of beauty and the worth of its worship to man. Now,
under the influence of nature, he intuitively knows that beauty once
seen and grasped is man's possession for ever. He is in much the same
position that Wordsworth was when he declared that
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
This was not the last poem that Keats wrote, but it was the last which
he wrote in the fulness of his powers. We can scarcely help wishing
that, beautiful as were some of the productions of his last feverish
year of life, this perfect ode, expressing so serene and untroubled a
mood, might have been his last word to the world.
NOTES ON THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.
In the early months of 1819 Keats was living with his friend Brown at
Hampstead (Wentworth Place). In April a nightingale built her nest in
the garden, and Brown writes: 'Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy
in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table
to the grass-plot under a plum, where he sat for two or three hours.
When he came into the house I perceived he had some scraps of paper in
his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On
inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his
poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well
legible, and it was difficult to arrange the stanza on so many scraps.
With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his _Ode to a
Nightingale_. '
PAGE 107. l. 4. _Lethe. _ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 81, note.
l. 7. _Dryad. _ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 5, note.
PAGE 108. l. 13. _Flora_, the goddess of flowers.
l. 14. _sunburnt mirth. _ An instance of Keats's power of concentration.
The _people_ are not mentioned at all, yet this phrase conjures up a
picture of merry, laughing, sunburnt peasants, as surely as could a long
and elaborate description.
l. 15. _the warm South. _ As if the wine brought all this with it.
l. 16. _Hippocrene_, the spring of the Muses on Mount Helicon.
l. 23. _The weariness . . . fret. _ Cf. 'The fretful stir unprofitable
and the fever of the world' in Wordsworth's _Tintern Abbey_, which Keats
well knew.
PAGE 109. l. 26. _Where youth . . . dies. _ See Introduction to the Odes,
p. 230.
l. 29. _Beauty . . . eyes. _ Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_, 'Beauty that must
die. '
l. 32. _Not . . . pards. _ Not wine, but poetry, shall give him release
from the cares of this world. Keats is again obviously thinking of
Titian's picture (Cf. _Lamia_, i. 58, note).
l. 40. Notice the balmy softness which is given to this line by the use
of long vowels and liquid consonants.
PAGE 110. ll. 41 seq. The dark, warm, sweet atmosphere seems to enfold
us. It would be hard to find a more fragrant passage.
l. 50. _The murmurous . . . eves. _ We seem to hear them. Tennyson,
inspired by Keats, with more self-conscious art, uses somewhat similar
effects, e. g. :
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
_The Princess_, vii.
l. 51. _Darkling. _ Cf. _The Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 355, note.
l. 61. _Thou . . . Bird. _ Because, so far as we are concerned, the
nightingale we heard years ago is the same as the one we hear to-night.
The next lines make it clear that this is what Keats means.
l. 64. _clown_, peasant.
l. 67. _alien corn. _ Transference of the adjective from person to
surroundings. Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 16; _Hyperion_, iii. 9.
ll. 69-70. _magic . . . forlorn. _ Perhaps inspired by a picture of
Claude's, 'The Enchanted Castle,' of which Keats had written before in a
poetical epistle to his friend Reynolds--'The windows [look] as if
latch'd by Fays and Elves. '
PAGE 112. l. 72. _Toll. _ To him it has a deeply melancholy sound, and it
strikes the death-blow to his illusion.
l. 75. _plaintive. _ It did not sound sad to Keats at first, but as it
dies away it takes colour from his own melancholy and sounds pathetic to
him. Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_: he finds both bliss and pain in the
contemplation of beauty.
ll. 76-8. _Past . . . glades. _ The whole country speeds past our eyes in
these three lines.
NOTES ON THE ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.
This poem is not, apparently, inspired by any one actual vase, but by
many Greek sculptures, some seen in the British Museum, some known only
from engravings. Keats, in his imagination, combines them all into one
work of supreme beauty.
Perhaps Keats had some recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Upon the
sight of a beautiful picture,' beginning 'Praised be the art. '
PAGE 113. l. 2. _foster-child. _ The child of its maker, but preserved
and cared for by these foster-parents.
l. 7. _Tempe_ was a famous glen in Thessaly.
_Arcady. _ Arcadia, a very mountainous country, the centre of the
Peloponnese, was the last stronghold of the aboriginal Greeks. The
people were largely shepherds and goatherds, and Pan was a local
Arcadian god till the Persian wars (c. 400 B. C. ). In late Greek and in
Roman pastoral poetry, as in modern literature, Arcadia is a sort of
ideal land of poetic shepherds.
PAGE 114. ll. 17-18. _Bold . . . goal. _ The one thing denied to the
figures--actual life. But Keats quickly turns to their rich
compensations.
PAGE 115. ll. 28-30. _All . . . tongue. _ Cf. Shelley's _To a Skylark_:
Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
ll. 31 seq.
l. 188. _covert_, hiding. Cf. _Isabella_, l. 221.
PAGE 94. l. 198. _fray'd_, frightened.
l. 203. _No uttered . . . betide. _ Another of the conditions of the
vision was evidently silence.
PAGE 95. ll. 208 seq. Compare Coleridge's description of Christabel's
room: _Christabel_, i. 175-83.
l. 218. _gules_, blood-red.
PAGE 96. l. 226. _Vespers. _ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See
Introduction, p. 213.
l. 237. _poppied_, because of the sleep-giving property of the
poppy-heads.
l. 241. _Clasp'd . . . pray. _ The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.
_missal_, prayer-book.
PAGE 97. l. 247. _To wake . . . tenderness. _ He waited to hear, by the
sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.
l. 250. _Noiseless . . . wilderness. _ We picture a man creeping over a
wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast
or other frightful thing.
l. 257. _Morphean. _ Morpheus was the god of sleep.
_amulet_, charm.
l. 258. _boisterous . . . festive. _ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.
l. 261. _and . . . gone. _ The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted
to express a dying-away of sound.
PAGE 98. l. 266. _soother_, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use
of the word. Sooth really means truth.
l. 267. _tinct_, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.
l. 268. _argosy_, merchant-ship. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 9,
'Your argosies with portly sail. '
PAGE 99. l. 287. Before he desired a 'Morphean amulet'; now he wishes to
release his lady's eyes from the charm of sleep.
l. 288. _woofed phantasies. _ Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf.
_Isabella_, l. 292.
l. 292. '_La belle . . . mercy. _' This stirred Keats's imagination, and
he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).
l. 296. _affrayed_, frightened. Cf. l. 198.
PAGE 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne's poem, _The Dream_:--
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.
l. 300. _painful change_, his paleness.
l. 311. _pallid, chill, and drear. _ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.
PAGE 101. l. 323. _Love's alarum_, warning them to speed away.
l. 325. _flaw_, gust of wind. Cf. _Coriolanus_, V. iii. 74; _Hamlet_,
V. i. 239.
l. 333. _unpruned_, not trimmed.
PAGE 102. l. 343. _elfin-storm. _ The beldame has suggested that he must
be 'liege-lord of all the elves and fays'.
l. 351. _o'er . . . moors. _ A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.
PAGE 103. l. 355. _darkling. _ Cf. _King Lear_, I. iv. 237: 'So out went
the candle and we were left darkling. ' Cf. _Ode to a Nightingale_, l.
51.
l. 360. _And . . . floor. _ There is the very sound of the wind in this
line.
PAGE 104. ll. 375-8. _Angela . . . cold. _ The death of these two leaves
us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy;
whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first
introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor,
and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON
MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.
These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the
early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the
same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together,
they seem to sum up Keats's philosophy.
In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal
principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast;
in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.
The first-written of the four, the _Ode to a Nightingale_, is the most
passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon
after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and
himself nursed to the end.
He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world
'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of
the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long
to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world
of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and
suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but
of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue
to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the
thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our
feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had
left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty
roused by the bird's song, he longed for death rather than a return to
disillusionment.
So in the _Grecian Urn_ he contrasts unsatisfying human life with art,
which is everlastingly beautiful. The figures on the vase lack one thing
only--reality,--whilst on the other hand they are happy in not being
subject to trouble, change, or death. The thought is sad, yet Keats
closes this ode triumphantly, not, as in _The Nightingale_, on a note of
disappointment. The beauty of this Greek sculpture, truly felt, teaches
us that beauty at any rate is real and lasting, and that utter belief in
beauty is the one thing needful in life.
In the _Ode on Melancholy_ Keats, in a more bitter mood, finds the
presence, in a fleeting world, of eternal beauty the source of the
deepest melancholy. To encourage your melancholy mood, he tells us, do
not look on the things counted sad, but on the most beautiful, which are
only quickly-fading manifestations of the everlasting principle of
beauty. It is then, when a man most deeply loves the beautiful, when he
uses his capacities of joy to the utmost, that the full bitterness of
the contrast between the real and the ideal comes home to him and
crushes him. If he did not feel so much he would not suffer so much; if
he loved beauty less he would care less that he could not hold it long.
But in the ode _To Autumn_ Keats attains to the serenity he has been
seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn
day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit
receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral
from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the
momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour,
concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds of autumn--its
music, as beautiful as that of spring. Hitherto he has lamented the
insecurity of a man's hold upon the beautiful, though he has never
doubted the reality of beauty and the worth of its worship to man. Now,
under the influence of nature, he intuitively knows that beauty once
seen and grasped is man's possession for ever. He is in much the same
position that Wordsworth was when he declared that
Nature never did betray
The heart that loved her; 'tis her privilege,
Through all the years of this our life, to lead
From joy to joy: for she can so inform
The mind that is within us, so impress
With quietness and beauty, and so feed
With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues,
Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men,
Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all
The dreary intercourse of daily life,
Shall e'er prevail against us, or disturb
Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold
Is full of blessings.
This was not the last poem that Keats wrote, but it was the last which
he wrote in the fulness of his powers. We can scarcely help wishing
that, beautiful as were some of the productions of his last feverish
year of life, this perfect ode, expressing so serene and untroubled a
mood, might have been his last word to the world.
NOTES ON THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE.
In the early months of 1819 Keats was living with his friend Brown at
Hampstead (Wentworth Place). In April a nightingale built her nest in
the garden, and Brown writes: 'Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy
in her song; and one morning he took his chair from the breakfast table
to the grass-plot under a plum, where he sat for two or three hours.
When he came into the house I perceived he had some scraps of paper in
his hand, and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On
inquiry, I found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his
poetic feeling on the song of our nightingale. The writing was not well
legible, and it was difficult to arrange the stanza on so many scraps.
With his assistance I succeeded, and this was his _Ode to a
Nightingale_. '
PAGE 107. l. 4. _Lethe. _ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 81, note.
l. 7. _Dryad. _ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 5, note.
PAGE 108. l. 13. _Flora_, the goddess of flowers.
l. 14. _sunburnt mirth. _ An instance of Keats's power of concentration.
The _people_ are not mentioned at all, yet this phrase conjures up a
picture of merry, laughing, sunburnt peasants, as surely as could a long
and elaborate description.
l. 15. _the warm South. _ As if the wine brought all this with it.
l. 16. _Hippocrene_, the spring of the Muses on Mount Helicon.
l. 23. _The weariness . . . fret. _ Cf. 'The fretful stir unprofitable
and the fever of the world' in Wordsworth's _Tintern Abbey_, which Keats
well knew.
PAGE 109. l. 26. _Where youth . . . dies. _ See Introduction to the Odes,
p. 230.
l. 29. _Beauty . . . eyes. _ Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_, 'Beauty that must
die. '
l. 32. _Not . . . pards. _ Not wine, but poetry, shall give him release
from the cares of this world. Keats is again obviously thinking of
Titian's picture (Cf. _Lamia_, i. 58, note).
l. 40. Notice the balmy softness which is given to this line by the use
of long vowels and liquid consonants.
PAGE 110. ll. 41 seq. The dark, warm, sweet atmosphere seems to enfold
us. It would be hard to find a more fragrant passage.
l. 50. _The murmurous . . . eves. _ We seem to hear them. Tennyson,
inspired by Keats, with more self-conscious art, uses somewhat similar
effects, e. g. :
The moan of doves in immemorial elms,
And murmuring of innumerable bees.
_The Princess_, vii.
l. 51. _Darkling. _ Cf. _The Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 355, note.
l. 61. _Thou . . . Bird. _ Because, so far as we are concerned, the
nightingale we heard years ago is the same as the one we hear to-night.
The next lines make it clear that this is what Keats means.
l. 64. _clown_, peasant.
l. 67. _alien corn. _ Transference of the adjective from person to
surroundings. Cf. _Eve of St. Agnes_, l. 16; _Hyperion_, iii. 9.
ll. 69-70. _magic . . . forlorn. _ Perhaps inspired by a picture of
Claude's, 'The Enchanted Castle,' of which Keats had written before in a
poetical epistle to his friend Reynolds--'The windows [look] as if
latch'd by Fays and Elves. '
PAGE 112. l. 72. _Toll. _ To him it has a deeply melancholy sound, and it
strikes the death-blow to his illusion.
l. 75. _plaintive. _ It did not sound sad to Keats at first, but as it
dies away it takes colour from his own melancholy and sounds pathetic to
him. Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_: he finds both bliss and pain in the
contemplation of beauty.
ll. 76-8. _Past . . . glades. _ The whole country speeds past our eyes in
these three lines.
NOTES ON THE ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.
This poem is not, apparently, inspired by any one actual vase, but by
many Greek sculptures, some seen in the British Museum, some known only
from engravings. Keats, in his imagination, combines them all into one
work of supreme beauty.
Perhaps Keats had some recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Upon the
sight of a beautiful picture,' beginning 'Praised be the art. '
PAGE 113. l. 2. _foster-child. _ The child of its maker, but preserved
and cared for by these foster-parents.
l. 7. _Tempe_ was a famous glen in Thessaly.
_Arcady. _ Arcadia, a very mountainous country, the centre of the
Peloponnese, was the last stronghold of the aboriginal Greeks. The
people were largely shepherds and goatherds, and Pan was a local
Arcadian god till the Persian wars (c. 400 B. C. ). In late Greek and in
Roman pastoral poetry, as in modern literature, Arcadia is a sort of
ideal land of poetic shepherds.
PAGE 114. ll. 17-18. _Bold . . . goal. _ The one thing denied to the
figures--actual life. But Keats quickly turns to their rich
compensations.
PAGE 115. ll. 28-30. _All . . . tongue. _ Cf. Shelley's _To a Skylark_:
Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.
ll. 31 seq.
