Poem Summary Endymion

Introduction of the Poet

John Keats is one of the finest English poets. In spite of living only for twenty-six years,
he contributed a lot to English Poetry. His poems are spirited and lively. His personal
life was a tale of sorrow and bereavement, but his keen observant eye made him an
admirer of nature, which is fully reflected in his poems.
Introduction of the Poem
Endymion is poem of great beauty. In this poem John Keats has expressed his
conception of beauty and has given a unique definition of beauty. According to
Classical Mythology Endymion was a beautiful youth with whom moon Goddess fell in
love and on whom she induced a perpetual sleep in order to kiss him without his
knowledge.
Summary
Endymion is a poem of great beauty. In this poem John Keats has expressed his
conception of beauty and has given a unique definition of beauty. According to
Classical Mythology Endymion was a beautiful youth with whom the moon goddess fell
in love and on whom she induced a perpetual sleep in order to kiss him without his
knowledge.
In this poem the poet says that beauty is a constant source of joy. Its loveliness
increases with the passage of time. Beauty is immortal. It appears in many shapes. The
world is full of misery but the beautiful objects of nature such as the sun, the moon, old
and new trees and flowers give us great pleasure and we forget our griefs.
“Beauty moves away the pall from our dark spirits.”
We also see glimpses of beauty of the grand places, which we imagine for the mighty
dead. Similarly we derive great pleasure from lovely tales which we have read or
heard. There are masterpieces of literature and Art which serve as source of eternal
joy. Heroic deeds and lives of great men of the past too, are among these objects of
beauty. It is the heights of keat’s imagination All these visions of beauty are like a
fountain, which gives an immortal drink to our thirsty souls.
“Imagination is the eye of the soul.”
- Joubert
Conclusion
Beauty is truth, turth beauty that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
- John Keats

John Keats is an ardent lover of beauty. This is his fundamental belief and it operates
in all his poems. He is really in search of Truth. He wants to enjoy beauty to the best
possible degree. Endymion is a magnificent poem, which reflects profound love of the
poet for beauty as it is a constant source of spiritual joy. Therefore one must not forget:
"A thing of beauty is a joy for ever

John Keats' poem "Endymion," the title of which means a thing of beauty, is typical of
many of Keats' works of poetry. This poem, like his others, is very descriptive and
vivid. Readers can read these words and instantly understand what Keats is trying to
portray.

The first words of the poem, "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: its lovliness increases;
it will never pass into nothingness," is a great summary of Keats' main objective in
writing this poem. Throughout his life, he has seen many beautiful things. While some
of those beautiful things seem to stay beautiful for a longer time than others, it is
inevitable that beauty cannot stay in its original state forever. Over time, beauty
changes, sometimes into something not so beautiful, such as a wilted flower or a faded
pieces of clothing, and sometimes into a different type of beauty such as a beautiful
little girl turning into a beautiful young woman. Beauty is truly dependent upon
perspective and opinions. What one person sees as beautiful may not be what someone
else sees as beautiful. Keats attempts to portray this idea throughout his entire poem
and to instigate high level thinking and processing in his readers' minds.

Keats uses his words to intrigue his readers. His words are clear and easy to
understand, yet not completely conclusive on their own. Readers have to make their
connections to their own lives to fully grasp Keats' meaning. Keats seems determined
to portray the idea that beauty can always be preserved through memories and
photographs even if beautiful things cannot physically last forever. They can last
forever in the minds of those who witnessed them, through photographs taken, and
these memories and photographs shared with others and continued down on through
future generations. Beauty never comes to a complete end unless memories are
neglected and not passed down to future generations. Beauty lives on as long as people
share it with others and keep it alive, no matter what it is or was that is or was
beautiful, an object, a person, a particular day, or anything else.

The ending of Keats' poem, "An endless fountain of immortal drink, pouring unto us
from the heaven's brink," tells his readers that beauty continues on even when it can't
be seen by the naked eye. People just need to realize true beauty and capture it in
memories, photographs, and through other means. Beauty goes on forever when
properly preserved and passed on.

John Keats Biography

John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, on the northern outskirts of London. His
father was Thomas Keats, manager of the Swan and Hoop, a livery stable, and his
mother was Frances Jennings, the daughter of the proprietor of the stables. In 1803,
Keats entered John Clarke's school in Enfield, about ten miles from London. Clarke was
a liberal and his influence may have contributed to Keats' political development. The
school, surprisingly, had a wider curriculum than such prestigious public schools as
Eton. There were about seventy-five boys in attendance. Its rural location may have
fostered Keats' love of nature. John was popular with the other boys and won a
reputation as an able fighter, in spite of his small size, but was not outstanding as a
scholar.
On April 15, 1804, John's father was thrown from a horse and died from a skull
fracture. His mother then married a bank clerk whom she soon left. Her second
husband sold the stables and the four Keats children were left without a home.
In March 1805, John's grandfather died, leaving the children without a male protector.
The mother seems to have dropped out of their lives, and so their grandmother, Mrs.
Jennings, took them into her house. Their mother reappeared in 1808, but died of
tuberculosis in 1810. After his mother's death, Keats developed a love of reading,
including the thrillers popular in his time. In his last two or three terms at Enfield he
won several prizes and even began a prose translation of Virgil's Aeneid. At this time
he made a friend of Cowden Clarke, eight years his senior, who had been his tutor in his
first years at Enfield. Clarke was instrumental in fostering a love of music and poetry
in Keats.
Possibly because he had watched his mother die, Keats decided to become a doctor and,
in 1811, when he reached the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to a Dr. Hammond. Not
until he was eighteen did he become deeply interested in poetry. It was apparently
Cowden Clarke's lending Keats a copy of Spenser's Faerie Queene that furnished the
stimulus. His first poem was an imitation of Spenser. Keats has often been compared to
Spenser in his richness of description.
In 1815, Keats ended his apprenticeship with Dr. Hammond and matriculated at Guy's
Hospital for one term (six months). In the beginning, Keats was an industrious student,
but in the spring of 1816, he seems to have begun to lose his interest in medicine in favor
of poetry. However, he passed his examinations in July 1816, and was qualified to
practice as an apothecary and a surgeon.
At this time Keats renewed his friendship with Clarke, met another young poet, John
Hamilton Reynolds, and was introduced to the essayist, journalist, and poet Leigh
Hunt, who was impressed by the poetry Keats had written so far. His friendship with
Hunt was to have an important effect on his life. Hunt deepened his interest in poetry
and made him a liberal in politics. His association with Hunt, however, who was a
well-known liberal, brought upon him the hostility of the influential Tory critics.
Early in 1817, Keats gave up medicine for poetry. His career at Guy's Hospital had been
a successful one, but his fascination with poetry was stronger, and he had proved, at
least to his own satisfaction, that he could write poetry. His modest inheritance would
support him, he thought, until he had made his way in poetry. His first volume,
published by Shelley's publisher, Oilier, appeared March 3, 1817. It was a mediocre
achievement, but it contained "Chapman's Homer." An acute critic should have been
able to see, at least on the basis of this one poem, that the author showed promise, but
unfortunately no acute and influential critic appeared as Keats' champion. The volume
went almost unnoticed. The many new friends he had made since coming to London —
Keats had a gift for friendship — were hopeful, but there was little they could do.
Keats now decided to try his hand at a long poem. The result was Endymion, an
involved romance in the Elizabethan style, in which a mortal, the shepherd Endymion,
was wedded to the goddess Diana and won immortal bliss. Keats worked on it from
April to November 1817, and it appeared in April 1818. Before the year was over,
Endymion was harshly reviewed in Blackwood's Magazine and the Quarterly Review.
These reviews effectively stopped the sales of the volume. Endymion, it must be said,
while containing many good lines and passages, is not a good poem, but worse poems
now forgotten have won fame and financial rewards for their authors. If Endymion
had been written by a respected Tory poet, it might have been hailed as a fine poem by
Blackwood's and the Quarterly. Keats' politics happened to be the wrong ones in 1818.
An important change in Keats' life was a walking tour that he took through the Lake
Country, up into Scotland, and a short trip to Ireland, with one of his friends, Charles
Brown, in the summer of 1818. The trip lasted from June to August and reached its
terminus in Cromarty, Scotland. The walking tour broadened Keats' acquaintance with
his environment and with varieties of people. The hardships which Keats and Brown
had to endure, often spending the night on the mud floor of a shepherd's hut, may have
weakened Keats' constitution and shortened his life. In Inverness, he developed a sore
throat and decided to return to London by boat. The trip itself produced very little
poetry.
In September, Keats began a new long poem, Hyperion, which he never finished. The
blank verse of Hyperion revealed that Keats had become a first-class poet. His firm
control of language in Hyperion is truly astonishing. Endymion and Hyperion could
have been the work of two different poets.
During the last months of 1818, Keats nursed his brother Tom, who had been stricken
with tuberculosis. Tom died on December 1 at the age of nineteen. The three months
which Keats spent nursing his brother exposed the already weakened poet to
tuberculosis, and, by the spring of 1819, he showed many of the symptoms of the disease
— depression, hoarseness, insomnia, and an ulcerated sore throat.
In April and May of 1819, Keats experienced a burst of energy and wrote "Ode to
Psyche," "Ode on Melancholy," "Ode on a Grecian Urn "and "Ode on Indolence." In
January he wrote his most perfect narrative poem, The Eve of St. Agnes.
Keats' future was now a problem. He was running out of money — and was in love
with a lively and lovely girl, Fanny Brawne. He thought of becoming a ship's surgeon.
His friend Brown, who had written a successful play, suggested that they write a
tragedy together that might be a financial success. As Keats needed solitude for a
lengthy work, on June 27 he left for the Isle of Wight, where he had begun Endymion.
Brown joined him there and supplied the plot while Keats supplied the words. They
spent the summer of 1819 working on Otho the Great. During this summer, Keats also
wrote his lengthy narrative poem Lamia, which he hoped would prove popular.
Unfortunately, neither of the legitimate theaters, Drury Lane and Covent Garden,
would take a chance on Otho, which was a decidedly mediocre work, but not worse
than some other plays staged by these two theaters.
After this summer Keats accomplished very little. He worked at Hyperion now and
then, began a new play (King Stephen), began a satire, and wrote his superb "To
Autumn." He had very little money left and he was filled with anxieties, but
nevertheless he and Fanny Brawne became secretly engaged. In February 1820, Keats
had a hemorrhage in his lungs; he began to cough blood and soon became an invalid.
Keats' third and last volume of poetry came out July 1, 1820, when he was staying with
the Hunts and recovering from another hemorrhage. Gradually the volume began to
receive favorable reviews, including one in the influential Edinburgh Review.
Nevertheless the volume sold slowly. Keats did not begin to receive attention as a poet
until after the romantic period was over.
On the advice of two doctors, Keats decided to go to Italy, a trip that was often a last
resort when one was stricken with tuberculosis. John Taylor, who had published Keats'
last volume put up the money for the Italian trip. The expected sales of the Lamia
volume were the security for the loan.
Keats sailed from London on September 17, 1821, and arrived in Naples almost a month
later. From there, he travelled to Rome, where he rented an apartment overlooking the
famous "Spanish Steps." There, attended by his painter friend Joseph Severn, he entered
the last stages of tuberculosis and died on February 23, 1821. He was buried in the
Protestant Cemetery in Rome near the stately Pyramid of Caius Cestius. On his
tombstone appears, at his own request, the words "Here lies one whose name was writ
in water." The thousands of visitors who read these words every year are eloquent
proof of how greatly he underestimated his poetic achievement.