John Keats

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John Keats
Keats—A Brief Biographical Sketch
Birth; Schooling; and the Deaths of Parents
John Keats was born on October 31, 1795. He was the eldest of the five children of
a stable-keeper. He went to school atEnfield, and found a friend in Charles Cowden
Clarke, son of the schoolmaster. He was remembered by his fellows for generosity,
pugnacity, and a passion for reading. He lost his father by a riding accident in 1804, and
his mother in 1810.
From Apprenticeship as a Surgeon to Poetry

In 1811, John Keats became an apprentice to a surgeon at Edmonton. During 1815-
17, he continued his studies at the London hospitals but his heart was not in medicine and
he felt that he was born to be a poet. Finally, he abandoned surgery for literature. Under
the influence of Leigh Hunt and with the help of Clarke, Keats now settled down to a
literary life. Through the kindness of Hunt, several sonnets by Keats appeared in The
Examiner. But his Poems,1817, which, with all their immaturities, included the well-
known sonnet On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, did not attract much attention.
It was followed in 1818 by the Jong narrative poem Endymion which received warm
praise from his friends but was attacked savagely by The Quarterly
Review and Blackwood’s Magazine.The hostile reviews deeply wounded the poet and, in
the opinion of some critics, hastened his death. (For instance, Byron remarked that Keats
was “snuffed out by an article”.) But in fact, Keats was a man of great courage and, instead
of being crushed by adverse criticism, he went on with his work with the idea of producing
poetry that the world should not let die. As Matthew Arnold says, Keats had “flint and
iron” in him. Endymion is romantic in subject, treatment and language. It contains an
extravagant wealth of imagery and suffers from an excess of unnecessary details. But it
also contains some remarkable passages of great beauty and charm.
The Tragic Death of His Brother; and Disappointment in Love
The wretched circumstances of Keats’s life make pathetic reading. Exposure during
a walking tour in Scotland and the strain of nursing his brother Tom, who died in
December, 1818, brought about a breakdown in his health. He felt very depressed and
downcast. To aggravate his misery, he fell passionately in love with a girl called Fanny
Brawne who did not respond to his love. The bitterness of this disappointment weighed
heavily upon his already drooping spirits and broken health. According to some
biographers; she had agreed to marry him but he could not marry her on account of his
poverty and growing illness.
His Finest Poems in a Volume Published in 1820
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Keats published only one more volume, Hyperion and Other Poems, 1820. This
volume contains his great contributions to literature: the fragmentary Hyperion, The Eve
of St. Agnes, the splendid odes To Autumn, To a Nightingale, On Melancholy,and On a
Grecian. Urn; and the ballad. La Belle Dame Sans Merci. All these are precious treasures
of English poetry. Shelley was so impressed by the beauty and promise ofHyperion that
he sent a generous invitation to Keats to come to Pisa and live with him; but Keats
declined the invitation as he had little sympathy with Shelley’s social and political views.
His Premature Death Due to Tuberculoses
Keats had seen a premature death because he had always felt threatened by
consumption which ran in the family and which had already carried off his brother Tom.
His fear of death finds expression in his sonnet, “When I have fears that I may cease to
be”, and elsewhere. He was now definitely known to he suffering from consumption. As a
lost hope, in September 1820, accompanied by his friend Joseph Severn, he
left England for Italy. At Lulworth he wrote his last sonnet, “Bright Star, would I were
steadfast as thou art”. He died inRome on February 23, 1821, and was buried in the old
Protestant cemetery near the Pyramid of Caius Cestius. Conscious to the last, and
attended by rare devotion bySevern, he chose his own epitaph: “Here lies one whose name
was writ in water”. Young as he died, he was one of the most germinal poets, and left a
deep mark on English literature.
In Memory of Keats
The first memorial to Keats was unveiled in the
parish church of Hampsteadon July 16, 1894, a bust sculptured by aBoston lady and
presented by Americans. In 1909, the house in which Keats died was opened as a Keats-
Shelley memorial. In connection with centenary celebrations a movement was started
which in 1925 acquired Lawn Bank, formerly Wentworth Place, Hampsteadt where Keats
lived during 1817-20, as a home for the Dilke collection of relics. There the poet is said to
have heard the nightingale of his famous ode. The KeatsMuseum was opened in 1931.
The Wretchedness of the Circumstances of His Life
Referring to the circumstances of Keats’s life, J.W. Beach writes: “There was, to
begin with, the somewhat low life background of the livery-stable where his father
worked. There was the want of refinement in his mother’s character and the early death
of both parents; the uncongenial profession of medicine to which he was apprenticed, the
vulgar companionship of young hospital attendants; the sickness and death of his brother
Tom, whom lie nursed during the three months of his decline; his own illness and his
somewhat neurotic disposition; his unhappy infatuation with Fanny Brawne; the ugly,
confining streets of London; and a general social tone and atmosphere that made him
what critics called a ‘Cockney’ poet. It all must have added up to something from which
his soul ardently craved relief.”

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Some Critical Observations About Keats as a Poet

His Originality as a Poet
Among the formative influences in Keats’s work, Spenser stands first; but Chaucer
and Milton influenced, only in a secondary degree, his poetic style and vocabulary; and
lesser poets like Chapman, William Browne, and his friend Leigh Hunt affected him
especially in his earlier work, in his choice of words and phrases, and in his search for
colour. But the finest part of Keats’s work owes nothing to a derivative source. In the
fragmentary Ode To Maia,with its purity of phrase and chastened beauty, there are no
echoes, no obligations:
O, give me their old”vigour, and unheard

Save of the quiet primrose, and the span
Of heaven, and few ears,
Rounded by thee, my song should die away
Content as theirs,
Rich in the simple worship of a day.
Concerned with Sensations Rather Than with Ideas
Perhaps his most notable divergence as a poet, from his contemporary Shelley, is
that he elects, as a rule, to deal with sensations rather than with ideas, with concrete life
than with abstract imaginings. The metaphysical power, that charges with intellectual fire
the visions of Shelley, is outside of his scope. Not that he eschews ideas;
the Odes eloquently refute such a suggestion; but when he elects to deal with ideas, he
chooses such human things as love, sorrow and beauty, and presents them in concrete
shape:
(i) The moving waters at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores.
(ii) She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair.
Thus’ do his ideas become incarnate with the shaping splendour of the consummate artist;
and thus does he help us to realise, as no other poet has done since Shakespeare, the
oneness of Truth and Beauty.
His Poetic Faith: Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
Keats once wrote, ‘I have loved the principle of beauty in all things’. This principle
came to him through three main channels: through external Nature, which he paints with
Shakespearean felicity; through the luxuriant richness of thought seen in Elizabethan
poets and playwrights: and through the severe grandeur of Greek art. If judged by
quantity; he cannot claim a position in the first rank, though no other poet would stand
higher if he had died at twenty-five; but if judged by quality, Keats must rank with the

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greatest moulders and creators of verse. The essential mark of his genius is that he unites
the ideals of oldGreece and modern romanticism. His poetic faith is summed up in the
close of the Ode On a Grecian Urn.
The Magic of His Use of Words
Keats was the most literary of great poets in his day in the sense that he used his
words with a keen awareness of the magic they had held for his predecessors. He was also
the poet for whom the world of beauty was an asylum, an escape from the dreary and
painful effects of ordinary experience. The beauties he has to offer are drawn, by selection,
from familiar native scenery, and they have great appeal for poetry lovers of all kinds.
His Felicities of Word and Phrase
Keats’s felicities of phrase and his sensitive insight into Nature are already seen
in I Stood Tiptoe:
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
His Challenge to Neo-Classic Poets
In Sleep and Poetry, the writer throws a challenge at the whole army of the neo-
classical critics. In Endymion, Keats’s art is still immature, but shows a great advance.
The narrative is confused, the allegory is dim, but there are many passages of exquisite
verse, wonderful gleams of landscape, fine philosophic ideals. While Keats was under the
spell of Hunt in thePoems of 1817, the predominant influences now are Spenser,
Wordsworth and Shakespeare. His best work at this time, particularly the great Ode To
Sorrow, has a vigorous morning freshness hardly to be found again in him. He does write
about Sorrow, but there is no real sadness in this ode which is an outpouring of the joy of
life. “It is a picture glowing with colour, instinct with animation—the-work of a young
bold mind which has neither regret for the past nor fear for the future.”
A Very Careful Artist
Keats was a very careful artist. He revised and remodelled his poems and took the
utmost pains in polishing them. He uses the choicest and most appropriate diction. There
are many jewelled phrases in his poems. A beautiful phrase delighted him with a sense of
intoxication. The extraordinary appeal of Keats’s poetry depends not only on his rich
sensuousness, his lush imagery, and the passionate exaltation of his feelings, but also on
his gift of phrase. The beauty of his phrases, the subtleties of rhythm in the combination
of words and their evocative power compel the imagination of the reader to the mood
which the poet seeks to produce in the reader. In some cases, this effect is achieved by the
use of the simplest words, as in the concluding lines of the sonnet, On First Looking into

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Chapman’s Homer, where the reaction of the sailors of Cortez to the discovery of the
Pacific is visualised:
and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon apeak in Darien...
The same is true of the wonderfully cadenced lines describing the song of the nightingale:
The same that oft times hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faerylands forlorn.
In other cases, there is a very skilful and intricate use of figurative expressions and
epithets:
When I behold, upon night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance...
and:
Thou still unravished bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian...
In each of these cases, the meaning is enriched by a number of emotional associations and
by an appeal to the imagination.
The Sheer Music of His Verse
Keats excels, too, in the quality of sheer music. This quality appears even in his
early works; the Hymn to Apollo, for instance, moves with a springing vigour and a
fullness of tone. In the great Odes, we find musical effects that are unsurpassed in English
lyric poetry. To a Nightingale, On a Grecian Urn, To Psyche, and To Autumn are a series
of rich and melancholy strains like those that a great master obtains from the varying
forces of an orchestra—raging bow high now low, from unearthly sweetness to solemn
undertones.
His Influence on Other Poets
Keats’s influence on the poets who came after him was operative in two ways. First,
he influenced the subject-matter of poetry in arousing in other writers the poetic love of
Nature for her own sake, and the love both of classic fable and of romance. Secondly, he
set before poets a certain standard of execution, and an example of “loading every rift of
a subject with ore”. He endeavoured after a continual poetic richness and felicity of

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phrase. A typical example is to be found in the lines that tell us of the trembling hopes of
Madeline in The Eve of St. Agnes:
But to her heart her heart was voluble,
Paining with eloquence her balmy side.
The beauty of these lines is not merely a beauty of fancy or of sound; it is the beauty which
dwells in truth only, every word being chosen by a careful exercise of the imagination.
“The first line describes in perfection the quality of consciousness in such a moment of
suspense, the second makes us realise at once the physical effect of the emotion on the
heroine, and the spell of her imagined presence on ourselves.”
The Poets Who Fell Under His Influence
The first considerable writer among Keats’s successors on whom his example took
effect was Hood in the fairy and romance poems of his earlier time. Tennyson was
profoundly influenced by it both in the form and the matter of his work, and is indeed the
heir of Keats and of Wordsworth in almost equal measure. After or together with
Coleridge, Keats has also contributed most to the poetic method and ideal of Rossetti. He
himself, alike by gifts and training, a true child of the Elizabethans, stands in the most
direct line of descent between the great poets of that age and those of subsequent times.
Cazamian’s View of Him as a Poet
“Keats, when he died, gave promise of becoming of greatest poet of his generation;
and one who, better than any other, would have united the free inspiration of romanticism
with the formal principle of the schools of the past. Some hundreds of lines raise him to
the level of the highest. His influence has never ceased to grow; all those schools which
claim as their principles a plastic notion of art have seen in him their master; the Pre-
Raphaelites, just as the English aesthetes, originate in part from him. Despite the
concentrated and difficult quality of his language, the finer artists, in every nation, have
felt the magnetic power of his example.”
W.H. Hudson’s View of Him
Thus W.H. Hudson: “Historically, Keats is important for three reasons. First, on
the side of form and style he is the most romantic of the romantic poets, handling even
his Greek themes with a luxuriance of language and a wealth of detail as far as possible
removed from the temperance and restraint of Hellenic art. Here, in particular, we note
his entire rejection of the classic couplet, for which, following the lead of his friend Leigh
Hunt, he substituted the couplets of the loose romantic type. Secondly, more than any
other great poet of his time, he represents the exhaustion of the impulses generated by
the social upheaval and the humanitarian enthusiasms of the Revolution. With him poetry
breaks away from the interests of contemporary life, returns to the past, and devotes itself
to the service of beauty. It is for this reason that he seems to stand definitely at the end of
his age. Finally, his influence was none the less very strong upon the poets of the
succeeding generation.”

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Some Observations by Douglas Bush

Here are some observations by Douglas Bush: Keats’s attack on Augustan verse
in Sleep and Poetry carried echoes of Wordsworth and Hazlitt. In the same poem the
young poet’s view of his present and future recalls the stages of Wordsworth’s
development outlined in Tmtern Abbey, but with characteristic differences. The rock and
cataract of Wordsworth’s youthful passion become in Keats the realm of Flora and old
Pan; and, while Wordsworth had already arrived at his third stage, of human sympathy,
the young Keats felt that he must force himself to leave the sensuous luxuries of Nature
for “the agonies, the strife/Of human hearts”. A similar sequence is described in the letter
(May 3, 1818) on the mansions of life in poetry, where Tmtern Abbey is cited.
Shakespeare, Keats finds is the supreme example of “negative capability”, and Keats
would have him as his tutelary genius. But he is also powerfully drawn to .Milton and
Wordsworth. While Keats is the finer artist, Wordsworth has seen further into the human
heart, into common and tragic experience. On the other hand, Keats dislikes at times
Wordsworth’s poetry because it has “a palpable design upon us”.
The Heart’s Affections; and the Importance of the Imagination
Keats’s desire for “a life of sensations rather than of thoughts” is a plea for the
intuitive life of the artist. In the same letter (November 22, 1817), written
whenEndymion was finished, Keats gives his first clear statement on life and poetry: “I
am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the Heart’s affections and the truth of
Imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth—whether it existed
before or not—for I have the same idea of all our Passions as of Love; they are all in their
sublime, creative of essential beauty.”
Poetry Versus Humanitarian Action
Yet the proclaimer of such a creed is deeply troubled, in his last long poem, The
fait of Hyperion, by the question whether poetry is a justifiable activity, as compared with
simple goodness and humanitarian action.
His Tribute to Medievalism
There are several poems that are relatively lacking in “ideas”. Isabella (1818),
though it has some fine bits, is as a whole a tissue of romantic pathos that has long been
popular with school-girls. The Eve of St. Agnes (1819) is incomparably better, so rich in
pictorial and verbal beauty that we are made to forget the romantic thinness of the human
emotions. La Belle Dame Sans Merci,whether or not it has any personal character, may
be called both an anti-romantic reply to The Eve of St. Agnes and a piece of romantic
magic. The disastrous love of a faery for a mortal had been a theme of old ballads, but this
blend of love and beauty and evil is closer to Christabel. With these poems, and the
unfinished The Eve of St. Mark, which is distinguished by its precise, restrained detail,
Keats paid his tribute to medievalism.
The Nature and Problems of a Poet

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(From the sonnet on Chapman’sHomer to The Fall of Hyperion almost all of his
major and many minor poems deal with the nature and problems of the poet. That in itself
is a remarkable fact.)
His Rank as a Poet
As a poet, Keats ranks with the highest. “Much that he wrote is immature and
inferior certainly; but the gold left after sifting is so pure—the verse so noble alike in spirit
and in form—and the influence so wide and durable—that he takes his stand with
Wordsworth and with Shelley, above Byron or Coleridge.” Matthew Arnold said of Keats:
“He is with Shakespeare”.
All His Great Poetry, Written During Three Years

It is believed that if Keats had lived longer he would have attained, Shakespearean
height in poetry. His poetry is very rich in promise. William J. Long writes: When we
remember that all his work was published in three short years, from 1817 to 1820, and
that he died when only twenty-five years’ old, we must judge him to be the most promising
figure of the early nineteenth century. But even judging him by work actually done by him,
he is a poet of no mean order. Like Spenser, he is a poets’ poet. He greatly influenced
Tennyson, Rossetti, Morris, and Swinburne.
His Enrichment of the Romantic Movement in Poetry
“Keats’s work was bitterly and unjustly condemned by the critics of his day. He
belonged to what was derisively called the Cockney school of poetry. Not even from
Wordsworth and Byron, who were ready enough to” recommend far less gifted writers,
did Keats receive the slightest encouragement. Shelley, with his sincerity and generosity,
was the first to recognise the young genius and in his noble Adonais he spoke the first
true word of appreciation, and placed Keats, where he unquestionably belongs, among
our greatest poets. The fame denied him in his sad life was granted freely after his death.
Most fitly does he close the list of poets of the romantic revival, because in many respects
he is the best workman of them all. He seems to have studied words more carefully than
did his contemporaries, and so his poetic expression or the harmony of word and thought,
is generally more perfect than theirs. More than any other he lived for poetry, as the
noblest of the arts. More than any other he emphasised beauty, because to him beauty
and truth were one and inseparable. And he enriched the whole romantic movement by
adding to its interest in common life, the spirit rather than the letter of the classics and of
Elizabethan poetry.”
The Most Shakespearean of All Poets
By power, as well as by temperament and aim, he was the most Shakespearean
spirit that lived after Shakespeare. In his premature death English literature sustained its
greatest loss. In the work actually left by him, the master-chord of humanity had not been
fully struck. “When we sum up in our minds the total effect of his poetry, we can think,

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indeed, of the pathos of Isabella, but of that alone, as equally powerful in its kind with the
Nature-magic of the Hymn to Pan and the Ode To a Nightingale, with the glow of
romance colour in St. Agnes’ Eve, the weirdness of romance sentiment in La Belle Dame
Sans Merci, the conflict of elemental force with fate inHyperion, the revelation of the soul
of ancient life and art in the Ode On a Grecian Urn and the fragment of an Ode to
Maia.”—(Sidney Colvin)
The View of Robert Bridges About His Work as a Poet
“To speculate upon the unrealised possibility of his genius would indeed be waste
of time. But when we note the immense development shown in the few years of his
activity, and further remember that, as his letters prove, his mind was ripening rapidly at
the end, we cannot but recognise the greatness of the loss which literature sustained in
his untimely death. ‘If one English poet might be recalled today from the dead to continue
the work which he left unfinished on earth, it is probable that the crown of his country’s
desire would be set on the head of John Keats’—(Robert Bridges). Even as it is, through
his direct influence on Tennyson, Swinburne, Rossetti, and Morris, he has left a deep
mark on the later English poetry.”
Keats’s Development as a Poet

The Flaws in His Apprentice Work
Keats was not only a deeply thoughtful poet he was also the most studious and
inspired artist among the romantics. He took a long time to work free of both his own
erratic taste and bad influences, and even his mature poems were not always flawless. The
massive sonnet on Chapman’s Homer, the spontaneous product of an exciting
experience, stands out from a great deal of poor apprentice work. And in the longer poems
up through Isabella,momentary felicities stand out from, thin, wayward, and often
meretricious lushness and a general lack of style and form.Hyperion (1818-19) was the
first long poem in which, with no fumbling or bathos, Keats displayed sure taste and
sustained control—and not only that but a majesty of style and movement that even the
hostile Byron pronounced as sublime.
The Mature Work

The first mature poem in his natural manner was The Eve of St. Agnes. Keats’s
minute revisions in this and the firstHyperion, and in other works, provide an education
in poetry. They show him replacing relatively flat or feeble words with suggestive and
forcible ones, especially in the way of epithets and verbs, in general obtaining heightened
intensity, and accomplishing parallel effects in rhythm. The Ode to a Nightingale was an
astonishing extempore production, though the complex stanzas of this and the other odes
apparently grew out of Keats’s prolonged experiment with the sonnet and his recent use
of the Spenserian stanza in The Eve of St. Agnes.While he returned in Lamia (1819) to the
long narrative, he wrote, not with the straggling looseness and prodigality

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ofEndymion, but in the strong, compact, forward-moving couplets of Dryden’s Fables;

here Keats’s technical and verbal brilliance seems to cover an uncertain attitude towards
his theme. In his valediction, To Autumn (1819), the least ambitious and most perfect of
the great odes, poetry comes as naturally as the leaves to a tree, and surprises by a fine
excess.—(Douglas Bush)
A Conscious Artist
Keats was a conscious artist, anxious to load his poetry as fully as possible with its
own special kind of excellence. We see the result of it in the devoted critical care he gives
to his own poetical development, the constant effort to correct faults in technique and
emotional tone, to abandon harmful models and choose better ones, above all to think out
the essentials of his own kind of poetry to the exclusion of everything else.
The Stages of His Development as a Poet
During his short career, Keats’s work is always changing and developing. At his
death he seems to have been on the edge of a further stage of growth. We feel of him that
there was much to come that would have been new and different. The relation of art, his
own kind of art, to human life as a whole, was a question that perplexed him from the
beginning.
The Volume of 1820, and His Ripe Work in it
In the volume of 1820, all his perfect work appeared. His mind ripened early, and
his work shows an extraordinary advance in both creative and critical
power. Endymion,in which Endymion’s pursuit of Diana typifies the poet’s pursuit of
beauty, is weak, diffuse, and full of mere prettinesses of diction. Lamia, the tale of a youth
who marries a serpent in the guise of a beautiful woman, and Isabella, show the growth
of human feeling and artistic restraint.Hyperion, a Greek fragment, is a triumph of
Miltonic severity. In The Eve of St. Agnes, and still more in the six great odes and the pick
of the sonnets, Keats reaches the height and ideal of his art, and founds the Tennysonian
school of flawless workmanship which was to influence much of the best verse of the
nineteenth century.
His Earlier Volume of Poems (1817)
His early work is immature and experimental. “His genius was ripening steadily at
the time of his premature death, and we can measure his moral and spiritual as well as
his artistic growth during the few years of his manhood by comparing his first little
volume of verse published in 1817, orEndymion which appeared the next year, with the
contents of his third and last volume—the volume of 1819—and especially with the great
odes: To Autumn, To a Nightingale, and On a Grecian Urn. But, even as it is, his place is
assured as Shelley prophesied, ‘with the enduring dead’.”
His Precocious Maturity
This is how Cazamian describes Keats’s poetic development: The work of Keats
bears the mark of a miraculous youth, cut short by death just when it had attained a

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precocious maturity. He lived a little longer than twenty-five years, and he passed with
surprisingly rapid progress from early efforts full of promise to masterpieces. His speedy
development as a poet is, indeed, one of the most wonderful phenomena in the history of
English poetry.
The Flaws of the Poem “Endymion”
In the beginning he had nearly all the defects of his qualities. Endymion has
admirable passages, but it represents the error of an undisciplined genius. The poet is
here dazzled by his own ardour. As a result, his attention is diffused over mere details,
and he shows no sense of an organised whole. The contours of the landscape, as those of
the action, are confused and blurred. The poet’s overwealthy imagination multiplies the
descriptive features. The language is often artificial, loaded with elaborate ornaments,
with rare, archaic, or affected, epithets. The poem is at the same time characterised by
over-refinement, profusion, the strain of an ever-present intensity, and somewhat of
morbidness. One feels in it an uncertain taste, and the effort of a literary endeavour
heroically carried through against an inspiration that is at times rebellious. On the whole,
the poem is tiring and disappointing, and yet there radiates out from it a youthful
enthusiasm so genuine and contagious as to leave a lasting impression upon the reader.
Everything Not on the Same Level in His Masterpieces
This exuberance, however, is of short duration, and the uncertainty of the poet in
his art soon gives place to the confidence of self-mastery. There is certainly a transition
from the immaturities of Endymion to the ripeness of poetic powers in the poet’s best
work. Lamia, for example, is not free from the failings which marked the first manner.
Again, among the masterpieces, everything is not on the same level. The delightful story
of The Eve of St. Agnes is too ornate, and somewhat decadent in style. In the pathos
ofIsabella, all the notes are not of equal sureness, and elements of too great a diversity
are unsatisfactorily blended.
His Best Work as a Poet
The best work of Keats is to be found in the original version of Hyperion, the Odes,
La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and the most beautiful of the sonnets. Here we find a perfect
fusion of sobriety with the force of touch and the wealth of expression. Here we find a rare
union of classical discipline, guided by the example of the ancients, with the more
precious matter which Keats finds in romanticism. This work has all the positive
substance of which English poetry had long since been emptied by a school of correctness
based upon reason. Keats brings here a strong force of selection, order and harmony to
bear on an unlimited range of intensely felt sensations and emotions. Nothing could be
more truly romantic than this work, nor could the very figure of antiquity be animated
with more concrete life.
The Poem “Hyperion”
Hyperion is an epic poem which challenges comparison with Milton. It set out to
relate the celestial revolutions of pagan mythology, as did Milton the Christian cycle of a
Paradise Lost and Regained. Though incomplete, the poem is already arresting by the

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vastness of conception which it promises, and by its visions of a gigantic and primitive
world. This poem stands out in wondrous majesty.
The Themes and the Style of His Great Odes
The Odes of Keats are constructed with harmonious skill. These poems deal with
the favourite themes in Keats’s romanticism—the sculptural beauty and grace of a Greek
urn, the charming myths of Hellas, the changing seasons and the joys of the earth, the
painful craving of the soul to find a beauty which endures, the fascination of death and
the bitter-sweet voluptuousness with which the poet meditates upon it. Everything here
cooperates to enchant a sensual and dreamy contemplation—the outlines, the colour, the
emotion and the melody. The tone is smooth and yet free from any excess of softness or
ease; indeed it is constantly relieved by notes of vigour. Each epithet is extra-ordinarily
rich in suggestion. Each image opens up to our view a far-reaching perception. The
language in these poems sparkles with all the gems of speech, without their brilliance
predominating over the conciseness and exactness of the whole. The rhythms are
perfectly adapted to the supreme unity of an impression.
Arthur Compton-Rickett’s View of His Poems
Arthur Compton-Rickett thus puts the case of Keats’s development: There is, in his
early work, an extravagance of speech and excess of emotion. Calidore, Sleep and
Poetry,and even Endymion, are overcharged with Spenserian imagery, and Elizabethan
conceits. But even in his early experiments there is an individual note. In / Stood
Tiptoe,there tie touches that no other poet than Keats could have given us:
A little noiseless noise among the leaves.
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
Sleep and Poetry is faulty in execution, but the point of view of the young Keats is
unmistakable:
Beauty was awake:
Why were ye not awake?
We cannot ignore in his early efforts the ornate extravagance, the abuse of double rhymes,
the faulty emphasis, the ugly vulgarities, the stammerings of a great poet. But the soul of
a poet is already there. Surely, we can expect splendid things from a youth of nineteen
who could write On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer.
There is the glorious promise and immature fulfilment of Endymion. The old myth
is, no doubt, indifferently told, and much of the descriptive writing is weak and diffuse.
But there are songs by the way which no lover of poetry would forego—the lovely
“roundelay” to Sorrow, and the splendid Bacchanalian Ode.
No one could strike the note of “fine excess” more triumphantly than Keats. Yet in
his most perfect work, in the Odes, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and The Eve of St.
Mark, he shows that the greatness of Poetry depends no less on the fine restraint. It is the

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lack of this restraint that troubles us in the rarely imaginative version of the Italian
tale,Isabella; in the glowing diction of Lamia; in the tapestried beauty of The Eve of St.
Agnes.
Of these, perhaps, Isabella, despite its morbid sensibility, alone achieves its
purpose. Lamia certainly fails to grip the imagination in the way intended. The
atmosphere of mystery has imperfectly been realised here. The Eve of St. Agnes is a piece
of richly decorative verse, and is pleasant enough with its “lucent syrops, tinct with
cinnamon”. But the “lucent syrops” are too generously supplied, and there are times in
the poem when we would gladly welcome the romantic vigour and directness of Scott to
give life and zest to the story.
In these poems, medievalism serves as the inspiration, and though it gave him
ample opportunities for the richness of colouring that was at once his merit and his failing,
it did not appeal to the strongest side of his nature.
The Incomplete Poem “The Eve of St Mark”
The Eve of St. Mark is incomplete. We have here only the Prologue to the poem,
and the subject of the poem is not reached. But the scene is set consummately, and the
atmosphere is suggested most successfully—the quaint old-world town with its leisurely
quietude; the girl brooding intently on the legend, half-fascinated, half-afraid; the chilly
sunset tremulous with premonition. The picture is perfectly visualised, and the details
make the whole thing amazingly actual. The restraint, the balance, the simplicity, the ease,
are beyond praise; with rare economy of effort, the poet arrests the reader and makes him
feel the impending tragedy.
The Odes
In the Odes, Keats gives us most of his inmost self, and he does so with the sure
hand of a great artist. Not all the odes stand on an equal footing. The Odes to
Indolencefaithfully depicts a passing mood, but it has no high beauty to recommend it.
The Ode to Psyche which deals with mythological lovers shows too clearly the too-mark
of the craftsman. But the Ode to a Nightingale, theOde on a Grecian Urn, the Ode on
Melancholy,and the Ode to Autumn are among the mightiest of achievements of English
poetry. The note of sadness sounds through them all; and the vivid joy of the perceptive
life, the ideal permanence of art, the glamour of romance, the benison of Nature’s varying
moods, are contrasted with the mutability of life and the short duration of pleasure.
The “Ode to a Nightingale”
“The Ode to a Nightingale, embodying the very spirit of old romance, is the most
voluptuous and passionate in its emotion. At points the emotion threatens to overpower
the writer, and a hysterical euphuism here and there jars on the reader. But for the most
part the passion, for all its intensity, is focussed and controlled, as for instance, in such
inspired felicities as

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…..magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn:
in the lovely image of Ruth
... when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn:
and above all, in the wistful beauty of the stanza where the poet cries out to
Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget, etc. etc.
Passages such as these are among his choicest and best.”
The View Expressed by H.W. Garrod
H.W. Garrod says: “The whole of Keats’s work, be it remembered, was done in a
space of less than four years, the best of it within the limit of a single year. At all points
the rapidity of his development is amazing. He ends, save for the Odes, still a conscious
imitator of the manner of other poets. That he could never have rested there, the Odes
make certain. Inevitably, in some other species, he must have found, before long, a
manner as individual as that which he has attained in the Odes. That he could have carried
this individual manner to success in compositions of a large compass in the narrative or
heroic species, I do not feel certain.”
Keats’s Aestheticism or Keats as a Poet of Escape

The Influence of Edmund Spenser on Keats
Keats was considerably influenced by Spenser and was, like the latter, a passionate
lover of beauty in all its forms and manifestations. This passion for beauty Constitutes his
aestheticism. Beauty, indeed, was his pole-star, beauty in Nature, in woman, and in art.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”, he writes and he identifies beauty with truth. “Of all
the poets in his time, Keats is one of the most inevitably associated with the love of beauty
in the ordinary sense of the term. He was the most passionate lover of the world as the
carrier of beautiful images and of the many imaginative associations of an object or word
with whatever might give it a heightened emotional appeal.” Poetry, according to Keats,
should be the incarnation of beauty, not a medium for the expression of religious or social
philosophy.
Keats’s Hatred of Didacticism

Keats hated didacticism in poetry. “We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon
us,” he wrote. He believed that poetry should be unobtrusive. The poet, according to him,
is a creator and an artist, not a teacher or a prophet. In a letter to his brother, he wrote:
“With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather
obliterates all consideration.” He even disapproved of Shelley for subordinating the true

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end of poetry to the object of social reform. He dedicated his brief life to the expression of
beauty. “I have loved the principle of beauty in all things”, he said.
Accused of Being a Poet of Escape
The world of beauty was for Keats an escape from the dreary and painful effects of
ordinary experience. He escaped from the political and social problems of the world into
the realm of imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley, he remained
absolutely untouched by revolutionary theories for the regeneration of mankind. His later
poems such as the Ode to a Nightingale and Hyperion, no doubt show an increasing
interest in humanity and human problems and, if he had lived, he would have established
a closer contact with reality. As it is, he may on the whole be termed as a poet of escape.
“With him poetry existed not as an instrument of social revolt nor of philosophical
doctrine, but for the expression of beauty.” Critics accuse him of being indifferent to
humanity but they should realise that he aimed at expressing beauty for its own sake.
The Contrast Between Him and Two of His Contemporaries
In John Keats, we have a remarkable contrast both with Byron on the one side and
with Shelley on the other. Keats was neither rebel nor Utopian dreamer. Endowed with a
purely artistic nature, he took up in regard to all the movements and conflicts of his time
a position of almost complete detachment. He knows nothing of Byron’s stormy spirit of
antagonism to the existing order of things and he had no sympathy with Shelley’s
humanitarian real and passion for reforming the world. The famous opening line
of Endymion—‘A thing of beauty is a joy for ever’—strikes the key-note of his work. As the
modern world seemed to him to be hard, cold, and prosaic, he habitually sought an
imaginative escape from it, not like Shelley into the future land of promise, but into the
past of Greek mythology, as in Endymion, Lamia, and the fragmentary Hyperion, or of
medieval romance, as in The Eve of St. Agnes, Isabella,and La Belle Dame Sans Merci. In
his treatment of Nature, this same passion for sensuous beauty is still the dominant
feature. He loved Nature just for its own sake and for the glory and loveliness which he
everywhere found in it, and no modern poet has ever been nearer than he was to the
simple ‘poety of earth’; but there was nothing mystical in the love and Nature was never
fraught for him, as for Wordsworth and Shelley, with spiritual messages and meanings.
The Most Perfect of Romanticists
“Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the romanticists. While
Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the
moral law, and Shelley advocating impossible reforms, and Byron voicing his own egoism
and the political discontent of the times, Keats lived apart from men and from all political
measures, worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his
own heart or to reflect some splendour of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be.
He had, moreover, the novel idea that poetry exists for its own sake and suffers loss by
being devoted to philosophy or politics, or, indeed, to any cause, great or small.”
The Oneness of Truth and Beauty in His Opinion
Of the qualities that made Keats great and that distinguished him from his great
contemporaries, the first is the disinterested love of beauty. He grasped the essential

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oneness of beauty and truth. His creed did not mean beauty of form alone. His ideal was
the Greek ideal of beauty inward and outward, the perfect soul of verse as well as the
perfect form. And, precisely because he held this ideal, he was free from the wish to
preach.
His Early Sonnets; and His Later Poetry
It was poetry itself that first enlisted his enthusiasm—poetry and art. His early
sonnets are largely concerned with poets or with pictures, sculptures, or the rural
solitudes in which a poet might nurse his fancy. His great odes have for their subjects a
storied Grecian urn; a nightingale (light-winged Dryad of the trees, a singer, throughout
all ages made glamorous by poetry); the goddess Psyche, mistress of Cupid, in the flowery
tale of Apuleius; the melancholy and indolence of a poet; and the season of autumn, to
which he turns from the songs of spring—’for thou hast thy music too’. What he asked of
poesy, of wine, or of nightingale’s song was to help him
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.
This was the burden of his earlier poems in which he meditated upon his business as a
poet: I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill andSleep and Poetry. The theme of both these
poems is that lovely things in Nature suggest lovely tales to the poet, and the great aim of
poetry is to
be a friend
To soothe the cares, and lift the thoughts of man
He also gives here a hint of sterner themes:
Where I may find the agonies, the strife
Of human hearts.
Perhaps Keats would have said that he attempted this nobler life of poetry in poems
like Lamia and Hyperion, but it is very doubtful whether he believed that he had done
justice to this more elevated type of poetic creation.
His Delight in a Life of Sensations
Love for him was a bed of roses into which one sinks with a delicious sense of
release from pain, responsibility, and moral inhibition. He did try, in his long fantasy
ofEndymion, to rise above the notion of love as the “mere commingling of passionate
breath” and to depict love as “a sort of oneness”, “a fellowship with essence”. But the
delights of the senses, the free play of the fancy, and the relaxation of the tired nerves were
still the most familiar marks with him.

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An Intellectual Side to His Aestheticism

But, according to Cazamian, the aestheticism of* Keats has also an intellectual side.
No one has ever reaped such a rich harvest of thoughts out of the suggestions which life-
had to offer. Through reading, and a thirst for knowledge, he became acquainted
with Greece, paganism, and ancient art. He became saturated with Hellenism, having
nothing of the learned scholar about him, but rather the naviette,the trifling errors of a
self-taught genius. He read the writers of the Renascence, loved and cultivated Spenser,
Chapman, Fletcher and Milton. His letters show how closely the cult of Shakespeare was
interwoven with his thinking. He admired Wordsworth most of all among contemporary
writers, although the closest influence was that of Leigh Hunt, to whom he was indebted
for something of his first manner.
An Adoration of Beauty, His Religion
From all these elements, continues Cazamian, Keats built for himself a personal
store of reflections and ideas. Religion for him took definite shape in the adoration of the
beautiful, an adoration which he developed into a doctrine: Beauty is the supreme Truth;
it is imagination that discovers Beauty, and scientific reasoning is an altogether inferior
instrument of knowledge. This idealism assumes a note of mysticism; one can see a
sustained allegory in Endymion; and certain passages are most surely possessed of a
symbolical value.
The View Expressed by Sidney Colvin
It was not Keats’s aim, says Sidney Colvin, merely to create a paradise of art and
beauty divorced from the cares and interests of the world. He did aim at the creation and
revelation of beauty, but of beauty wherever its elements existed. His conception of poetry
covered the whole range of life and imagination. It is true that, because he did not live
long enough, he was not able to fully illustrate the vast range of his conception of poetry.
During the ‘ brief period of his creative work, he could only reveal the hidden delights of
Nature, understand and express the true spirit of classical antiquity, and recreate the spell
of the Middle Ages. Fate did not give him time enough fully to unlock the mysteries of the
heart, and to illuminate and put in proper perspective the great struggles and problems
of human life.
The Greek Note in Keats’s Poetry/ Hellenism

The Greek Spirit in Keats’s Poetry
Shelley expressed the opinion that “Keats was a Greek”. Indeed, Keats was
unmistakably a representative of Greek thought, in a sense in which Wordsworth and
Coleridge and even Shelley were not. The Greek spirit came to Keats through literature,
through sculpture, and through an innate tendency, and it is under Hellenic influence as
a rule that he gives of his best.

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Keats’s Inborn, Temperamental “Greekness”

The inborn, temperamental “Greekness” of Keats’s mind is to be seen in his love of
beauty. To him, as to the Greeks, the expression of beauty is the ideal of all art. And for
him, as for them, beauty is not exclusively material nor spiritual, nor intellectual, but is
the fullest development of all that goes to make up human perfection.
His Personification of the Forces of Nature
Keats is a Greek, too, in his manner of personifying the forces of Nature. His
Autumn is a divinity in human shape: she does all kinds of work, and directs every
operation of harvest. This is a typical attitude of the Greek. The Pan of Greek myth was
more than half human. Whoever wandered into the lonely places of the wood might expect
to hear his pipe or even to catch a glimpse of his hairy hands and puck-nosed face; and
the Pan of Keats’s ode is half-human, too, as he sits by the riverside or wanders in the
evenings in the meadows. Keats has “contrived to talk about the gods much as they might
have been supposed to speak”. The world of Greek paganism lives again in his verse, with
all its frank sensuousness and joy of life, and with all its mysticism. Keats looks back and
lives again in the time
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
Holy the air, the water, and the fire. (Ode to Psyche)
His Interest in Greek Mythology
Towards the creations of Greek mythology Keats was attracted by an
overmastering delight in their beauty, and a natural sympathy with the phase of
imagination that created them. “He possessed the Greek instinct for personifying the
powers of Nature in clearly defined imaginary shapes endowed with human beauty and
half-human faculties. Especially he shows himself possessed and fancy-bound by the
mythology, as well as by the physical enchantment, of the moon. Never was bard in
youth/so literally moon-struck. Not only had the charm of the myth of the love of the
moon-goddess for Endymion interwoven itself in his being with his natural sensibility to
the physical and spiritual spell of moonlight; hut deeper and more abstract meanings than
its own had gathered about the story in his mind. The divine vision which haunts
Endymion in dreams is for Keats symbolical of Beauty itself, and it is the passion of the
human soul for beauty which he attempts, more or less consciously, to shadow forth in
the quest of the shepherd-prince after his love.”
His Main Themes Drawn from Greek Myths, Art, and Literature
Greek myth, and to a smaller extent Greek art and literature, provide either his
main themes or numerous allusions. Keats’s boyish enthusiasm had been nourished by
his Elizabethan reading, by Leigh Hunt, by the Elgin Marbles, and by Wordsworth. One
reason for Keats’s high regard for The Excursion would be the account in the fourth book
of the Greek religion of Nature and its imaginative expression in myth. Classical myth had
been a very rich element in Renaissance poetry from Spenser to Milton, but had been

19
blighted by Augustan rationalism. It revived with the romantic religion of Nature and the
imagination. Wordsworth’s sonnet “The World Is Too Much With Us” shows the
attraction of classical myth for Wordsworth. Wordsworth here points out that the Greeks,
who saw Proteus rising from the sea and heard old Triton blow his horn, were nearer
religion than Christian Englishmen bent upon making money and with no eye or ear for
Nature. Keats’s Sleep and Poetry contains echoes of Wordsworth’s sonnet.
No First Hand Knowledge of Greek Literature
Keats had no first-hand knowledge of Greek literature. He derived his knowledge
of the Greek classics from translations and books of reference like Chapman’s translation
of Homer, and Lempriere’s Classical Dictionary. His sonnet on Seeing the Elgin
Marbles reveals the important influence exerted on him by Greek sculpture. According to
a critic, Hyperion is in poetry what the Elgin Marbles are in sculpture. The calm grandeur
of Greek art, its majesty and symmetry and simplicity, its economy of ornament and
subordination of parts to the whole, came to Keats through his knowledge of these
marbles. This influence is most obvious in the two odes, On Indolence and On a Grecian
Urn.
His Limitations as a “Greek”
But Keats has his limitations as a Greek. He does not write of Greek things in a
Greek manner. Something indeed in Hyperion—at least in its first two books—he caught
from Paradise Lost of the high restraint and calm which was common to the Greeks and
Milton. But his palace of Hyperion, with its vague, far-dazzling pomps and phantom-
terrors of coming doom, shows how far he is in workmanship from the Greek purity and
precision of outline, and firm definition of individual images. Similarly one of the most
characteristic images[1] of Nature from this poem shows not the simplicity of the Greek,
but the complexity of the modern, sentiment of Nature, with its concourse of metaphors
and epithets. Keats produces here every effect which a forest-scene by starlight can have
upon the mind: the pre-eminence of the oaks among the other trees, their aspect of human
venerableness, their verdure unseen in the darkness, the sense of their stillness and
suspended life, etc.
The Absence of Certain Greek Elements from His Poetry
The rooted artistic instincts of the Greeks were absent from Keats’s nature and
temperament. He did not have the Greek instinct of selection and simplification, or of a
rejection of all beauties except the vital and the essential. He did not have the capacity to
deal with his material in such a way that the main masses might stand out unconfused, in
just proportions and with outlines perfectly clear. And like his aims and his gifts, he was
in his workmanship essentially romantic, Gothic, English. At the time when he
wrote Endymion, he believed that poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and the manner
in which Keats deals with the Greek story of Endymion, is as far from being a Greek or
classical manner as possible.

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Sidney Colvin’s Analysis of Keats’s Hellenism

“But though Keats sees the Greek world from afar, he sees it truly. The Greek touch
is not his, but in his own rich and decorated English way he writes with a sure insight into
the vital meaning of Greek ideas. For the story of the war of Titans and Olympians he had
nothing to guide him except the information that he got from classical dictionaries. But
as to the essential meaning of that warfare and its result, it could not possibly be
understood more truly, or illustrated with more beauty and force, than by Keats in the
speech of Oceanus in the Second Book. In the dethronement of an older and ruder
worship by one more advanced and humane, in which idea of ethics and of arts held a
larger place beside ideas of Nature and her brute powers—this idea has fully been brought
out. Again, in conceiving and animating the colossal shapes of early gods, Keats shows a
masterly instinct. This is clear from his choice of comparisons, drawn from the vast
inarticulate sounds of Nature, by widen he seeks to make us realise their voices.
Keats’s Treatment of Nature

Keats’s Love of Nature for Nature’s Sake
Keats’s sentiment of Nature is simpler than that of the other romantics. He remains
absolutely uninfluenced by the Pantheism of Wordsworth and Shelley, and loves Nature not
because of any spiritual significance in her or any divine meaning in her but chiefly because of her
external charm and, beauty.
The instinct of Wordsworth was to interpret all the operations of Nature by those of his own
soul. For Shelley, natural beauty was symbolical in a two-fold sense. In the visible glories of the
world, his philosophy saw the veil of the unseen: and all the imagery of Nature’s more remote
and skyey phenomena was inseparable in his soul from visions of a radiant future. In Keats the
sentiment of Nature was simpler, more direct, and more disinterested than in either of these two
poets. It was his instinct to love and interpret Nature more for her own sake, and less for the
sake of the sympathy which the human mind can read into her with its own workings and
aspirations. He was gifted with a delighted insight into all the beauties of woods and fields.
Keats is the poet of the senses, and he loves Nature because of her sensuous appeal, her appeal
to the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the sense of touch. He loves flowers
because of their beauty of colour, fragrant smell, and softness. He loves the streams because of
their music. He loves the snow, the moon and rainbow for their visual loveliness. He has no
mystic intercourse with Nature and reads no moral significance in her (except probably when he
personifies the moon as Cynthia in his Endymion and considers her influence as beneficent).
His Love of Nature in His First Volume of Poems
There is ample evidence of his love for Nature for Nature’s own sake in Keats’s first volume
of poems. In I Stood Tiptoe, we have several Nature-pictures showing Keats’s delight in the
beauties of Nature. We have, for instance, the following lines:
The clouds were pure and white as flocks new-shorn,
And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept

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On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept

A little noiseless noise among the leaves
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves:
This beautiful picture of the white clouds sleeping on the blue fields of heaven is followed by other
pictures of Nature:
A bush of May-flowers with the bees about them:
Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;
And let the lush laburnum oversweep them.
And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them
Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets,
That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
This picture of the May-flowers, the long grass, the violets, etc., has an obvious sensuous appeal.
His Love of the Static Aspects of Nature
The two pictures of Nature given above illustrate another point in regard to Keats’s
treatment of Nature. He dwells chiefly upon the static aspects of Nature like the flowers, the trees,
the grass, the hills, the moonlight, the fields, etc. In this respect, again, he may be distinguished
from Shelley who is more interested in the dynamic aspects of Nature like the west wind and the
cloud, and the shifting phenomena of Nature like the ocean and the sunset. This is howSleep and
Poetry opens:
What is more gentle than a wind in summer?
What is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That stays one moment in an open flower,
And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing?
In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?
More healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More secret than a nest of nightingales?
Here we have a series of Nature pictures—the bee flying from flower to flower, the musk-rose
blowing in a green island, the leafiness of dales, a nest of nightingales.
His Keen Observation of Nature; and His Vivid Pictures
Keats’s observation of Nature is very keen and nothing escapes it. In most of his poems we
have Nature-description for its own sake, “expressive of nothing but a keen delight and genuine
joy in Nature”. His Nature-pictures are detailed and elaborate. It is for this reason that he is
generally regarded as a precursor of the TennysonianSchool of Nature. In Endymion, the account

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of the feast of Pan contains passages which in the quality of direct Nature-interpretation are
scarcely to be surpassed in poetry:
rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man’s voice was on the mountains, and the mass
Of Nature’s lives and wonders puls’d ten-fold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
In Fancy, the poet shows his keen observation when he gives us an inventory of natural
phenomena by mentioning the field-mouse peeping from its cell, the snake casting away its
winter-skin, the freckled eggs being hatched in the hawthorn tree, the hen-bird’s wing resting on
her mossy nest, etc.—
Thou shall see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its called sleep,
And the snake all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin;
Freckled nest-eggs thou shall see
Hatching in the hawthorn tree,
When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest
Quiet on her mossy nest;
Then the hurry and alarm
When the bee-hive casts its swarm;
In the Ode to a Nightingale we have a couple of remarkable Nature-pictures owing Keats’s delight
in the purely sensuous appeal of Nature. One is the picture of the moon shining in the sky while
there is darkness on the grassy floor of the forest:
And happy the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by her starry fays; etc., etc.
The other is a picture of flowers—hawthorn, eglantine, violets, musk-roses:
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast fading violets cover’d 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.

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In the Ode to Psyche, we again have a couple of exquisite pictures of Nature. Cupid and Psyche
are seen lying side by side:
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet scarce espied:
Mid-hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed.
Blue, silver white, and budded Tyrian,
They lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass;
This is, indeed, one of the best Nature-pictures in Keals’s poetry. We have the deep grass below
and the leaves and blossoms up on the branches of trees; there is a brooklet close by and, above
all, there are the hushed, cool-rooted, fragrant-eyed flowers of various colours. It is a most inviting
picture.
In the Ode on Melancholy, we have a beautiful picture of rain falling from a cloud above
on the drooping flowers below:
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And hides the green hill in an April shroud:
Then, of course, we have the Ode to Autumnin which we have beautiful pictures of autumn’s fruits
and autumn’s songs. The ripe apples, the swollen gourd, the sweet kernel in the hazels, the honey
in bee-hives have all a rich sensuous appeal. The songs of autumn are the mournful sounds of
gnats, the bleating of lambs, the singing of crickets, the whistling of the redbreast and the
twittering of the swallows. The whole of this poem illustrates Keats’s extraordinary powers of
observation in the world of Nature. The brief picture of the sunset over the fields in this poem is
noteworthy:
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue:
The Greek Element in His Attitude to Nature
Keats’s attitude to Nature has been compared with that of the ancient Greeks. The ancient
Greeks personified the objects and forces of Nature. They called the moon Cynthia, and the sun
Apollo; they saw Dryads in the wood and Naiads in water. Keats, too, sometimes followed the
Greeks in this respect. In one of his poems he says:
I shall again sea Phoebus in the morning:
Or flushed Aurora in the rosiate dawning!
Or a white Naiad in a rippling stream.
Aurora in Greek mythology is the goddess of dawn; Phoebus is the god of sun and a Naiad is a
water-spirit. In other words, Keats possessed a myth-making faculty in regard to Nature. This is,
of course, best seen inEndymion and in Hyperion. Shelley, too, it may be observed, personified
the objects of Nature—he personified the west wind, the cloud, the Mediterranean, etc. But while,
in Shelley’s case, the objects of Nature retain their character as objects of Nature and are not given
any human character, Keats gives to his personifications of the objects and forces of Nature a

24
distinctly human character, thus following the Greeks. The moon is for him Cynthia who falls in
love with a mortal and has the same amorous desire as an earthly woman.
An Occasional Complex Sentiment in His Treatment of Nature
Occasionally Keats’s treatment of Nature shows a complex sentiment, as in the following
lines from Hyperion:
As when, upon a tranced summer night,
Those green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir.
Here Keats employs several metaphors and epithets to express every effect which a forest scene
by star-light can have upon the mind.
One of the Supreme Poets of Nature
Keats was one of the supreme poets of Nature. To Wordsworth Nature is a living with
power to influence man for good or ill. Keats neither gives a moral life to Nature, as Wordsworth
did, nor attempts to pass beyond her familiar manifestations, as Shelley did. (Shelley is the poet
“of sky and sea and cloud, the gold of dawn and the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. The world
of Nature that he paints is rarely a world that we know.”) But in Keats’s Nature poetry, realism or
the quest for pure truth informs every detail. He is the predecessor of .the Tennysonian school
because all his Nature-poetry is based on exact knowledge, and the knowledge of a man
deliberately observing and storing up the minutest details of what he sees.
Sidney Colvin’s View
Sidney Colvin observes: Keats’s character as a poet of Nature begins distinctly to declare
itself in his first volume, the Poems of 1817. He differs by it alike from Wordsworth and Shelley.
The instinct of Wordsworth was to interpret all the operations of Nature by those of his own
strenuous soul. For Shelley, natural beauty was symbolical in a two-fold sense. In the visible
glories of the world, his philosophy saw the evil of the unseen; and all the imagery of Nature’s
more remote and skyey phenomena was inseparable in his soul from visions of a radiant future.
In Keats the sentiment of Nature was simpler than in either of these two men; more direct, and
more disinterested. It was his instinct to love and interpret Nature more for her own sake, and
less for the sake of sympathy which the human mind can read into her with its own workings and
aspirations. He was gifted with a delighted insight into all the beauties of the woods and fields.
Evidences of this gift appear in the longer poems of his first volume, with their lingering trains of
peaceful summer imagery, and loving inventories of “Nature’s gentle doings”; and pleasant
touches of the same kind are scattered also among the sonnets as in To Charles Wells:
As late I rambled in the happy fields,
What time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
From his lush clover covert,—
or again in the one To Solitude:
let me thy vigils keep
‘Mongst boughs pavilion’d where the deer’s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the foxglove bell.

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Keats’s Medievalism
The Spell of the Middle Ages Upon Keats
Keats was a great lover of the Middle Ages. He responded more than any other poet
to the spell of medieval romance. He was not interested in the political or social conditions
of his age nor did he dream of the Golden Age of man. He was more or less a poet of
escape, an idealist. The Middle Ages have always exercised a special charm on poets by
virtue of their chivalry, romance, knighterrantry, supernatural beliefs, etc. Keats, who was
chiefly a poet of pure imagination without much contact with reality, was naturally
fascinated by the charm of the Middle Ages. Keats pays his tribute to the Middle Ages
in The Eve of St. Agnes, The Eve of St. Mark, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, and Isabella.
The Medieval Elements in “The Eve of St. Agnes”

The Eve of St. Agnes is a medieval poem in background, motive and atmosphere.
Its story is based upon a medieval superstition according lo which a maiden, by observing
certain rituals on St. Agnes’ Eve could win sight other would-he husband in a dream:
They told her how, upon St. Agnes’ Eve,
Young virgins might have visions of delight.
If ceremonies due they did aright.
Keats wove into this superstition the motive of a love-passion between the son and the
daughter of hostile families. The love motive brings into play the gallantry of Porphyro
who -enters the castle of his enemies to meet his beloved at the risk of his life. A hundred
swords would have pierced his body, had his presence in the castle become known.
Other Medieval Touches in That Poem
In addition to a medieval superstition serving as the basis of the poem and
medieval chivalry serving as its motive, the medieval atmosphere is built up by many
other touches. There is the Beadsman telling his rosary and saying his prayer: there is the
revelry in the hall with plume, ‘tiara and trumpets; there is the reference to the medieval
story of Merlin’s death by treachery; there is the wonderful picture of a thousand
heraldries, dim emblazonings, and a shielded scutcheon blushing with the blood of
queens and kings; there is finally the Baron who dreamt that night of witch and demon
and many a woe. Each of these touches has some medieval association; the Beadsman
praying before the Virgin in the chapel calls up the devotional character of the times; the
plume and tiara and the stained-glass window recall medieval art; the heraldries take us
back to the chivalrous character of the period; the mention of Merlin touches the medieval
folk-ISO) lore, while the witch and the demon reflect the superstition of the Middle Ages.
The Medieval Elements in “La Belle Dame”
La Belle Dame Sans Merci deals with the love of a knight-at-arms for a fairy. The
knight-at-arms immediately reminds us of the Middle Ages when there used to be many

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knights wandering about in search of adventure for the fun of it or for money. The knight
here suggests the chivalry and the spirit of adventure of the Middle Ages. The
supernaturalism of this poem is also a medieval quality. The beautiful lady here is not an
earthly woman. She is a witch who appears in the shape of a beautiful woman to entangle
unsuspecting men who fall in love with her. Another supernatural element is the horrible
dream in which the knight learns the real nature of the witch to whose deceptive charms
he has fallen a victim.
Yet Another Medieval Poem
The Eve of St. Mark again deals with a medieval superstition. This superstition was
that a person stationed near a church-porch at twilight on the Eve of St. Mark would see
the apparitions of those about to die, or be brought near death, in the ensuing year.
However, this poem was not completed and remains a fragment.
Passion and the Romantic Background of Passion
An important point about Keats’s medievalism is its stress upon passion and the
romantic background of that passion rather than upon action and thrilling adventure. If
Sir Walter Scott had written The Eve of St. Agnes, he would have made Porphyro light
with his enemies in order to thrill us. But Keats shows his hero entering stealthily into the
castle with his heart on fire for Madeline, feasting his eyes upon her physical charms and
playing on a lute for her till she wakes up and the two “melt”‘ into each other. The note of
passion, indeed, is emphasised. When the moon throws its beautiful light on Madeline’s
breast, Porphyro grows faint with love and desire. On seeing Madeline undressing herself
in order logo to bed, Porphyro feels that he is in Paradise. His soul aches with love. When
she opens her eyes, he sinks upon her knees. She heaves many sighs and speaks in
voluptuous tones, while he keeps gazing on her in an appealing manner. Addressing her
passionately, he says, “My Madeline! sweet dreamer! lovely bride!” Indeed the whole
poem throbs with passion. The same is the case in La Belle Dame Sans Merci. There is
hardly a story or a plot in this poem. Keats sets before us, with imagery drawn from the
medieval world of enchantment and knight-errantry, a type of the wasting power of love.
The imagery powerfully expresses the passion of the knight.
Two Vivid Pictures in “The Eve of St. Mark”
The interest of The Eve of St. Mark, again, lies not in narrative but in pictorial
brilliance and charm or workmanship. There are two vivid pictures in the poem: the out-
door picture of the city streets, and the indoor picture of the maiden reading a book in her
fire-lit chamber.

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Keats’s Sensuousness
Keats, Pre-eminently the Poet of the Senses
Sensuousness is the paramount quality of Keats’s poetical genius. Keats is pre-eminently
the poet of the senses and their delights. No one has catered to and gratified the five human senses
(touch, taste, smell, sight and hearing) to the same extent as Keats. He is a great lover of beauty
in the concrete. His religion is the adoration of the beautiful. In this respect he is a follower of
Spenser. “I have loved the principle of Beauty in all things”, he said. His Endymionbegins with
the famous line:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

Sensuousness of the Poems in the Volume of 1817
The Sensuousness of Keats is a striking characteristic of his entire poetry. In the volume
of 1817, we have an abundance of sensuous imagery. Characteristic of his temperament are the
following lines in I Stood Tiptoe:
So I straightway began to pluck a posey
Of luxuries bright, milky soft and rosy.
We have more lines in that poem in the same strain:
A tuft of evening primroses,
O’er which the mind may hover till it dozes;
O’er which it well might take a pleasant sleep,
But that’ tis ever startled by the leap
Of buds into ripe flowers;…..
Or by the moon lifting her silver rim
Above a cloud, and with a gradual swim
Coming into the blue with all her light.
In The Eve of St. Agnes, the description of the Gothic window is famous for its rich sensuous
appeal. Keats describes the rich colours of the window-panes of “quaint device”, on which were
“stains and splendid dyes as the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d wing”. The reference to the music of
the instruments in the same poem appeals to our sense of hearing:
The boisterous, mid-night, festive clarion,
The kettle-drum, and far-heard clarionet:
Again, the description of the feast arranged by Prophyro is highly sensuous:
While he from forth the closet brought a heap
Of candied apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd,

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And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates,…..
The apple, quince, plum, gourd, jellies and dates make our mouths water. This passage of the
spread feast of dainties is, indeed, sumptuous and inviting.
The Moonlight on Madeline’s Fair Breast
Our senses of sight and smell are also gratified when the poet describes the wintry moon
throwing its light on Madeline’s fair breast and the rose-bloom falling on her hands. We have a
delightful combination of colours in these lines, as in the stanza describing the Gothic window:
Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
And on her hair a glory, like a saint.
Madeline Undressing Herself
Even more sensuous is the picture of Madeline undressing herself. As Madeline removes the
pearls from her hair, unclasps the jewels one by one, and loosens her fragrant bodice, she looks
like a mermaid in sea-weed, and Porphyro thinks himself to be in paradise. The phrases “warmed
jewels”, “fragrant bodice”, and “rich attire” are particularly noteworthy here. The stanza in which
the poet describes the passionate love-making of Porphyro and Madeline, again, has a richly
sensuous appeal. Porphyro is represented as “beyond a mortal man impassioned far”; he is like “a
throbbing star seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose”; and he melts into Madeline’s dream,
as the rose blends its odour with the violet—”solution sweet”.
The Sensuous Appeal of “La Belle Dame”
The short masterpiece, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, has its own sensuous appeal. The lady
is described as “full beautiful, a fairy’s child”, with long hair, light foot, and wild eyes. The knight
makes “a garland for her head, and bracelets too, and fragrant zone”. She finds him roots of sweet
relish, wild honey, and manna dew. And then
She took me to .her elfin grot,
And there she wept and sigh’d full sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
Sensuous Imagery of the Great Odes
The odes, which represent the highest poetic achievement of Keats, are replete with
sensuous pictures. The Ode to Psychecontains a lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an
embrace in the deep grass, in the midst of flowers of varied colours:
“Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed.”
The lovers lie with lips that touch not but which have not at the same time bidden farewell. We
have more sensuous imagery when Keats describes the superior beauty of Psyche as compared
with Venus and Vesper. Venus and Vesper are themselves described in sensuous phrases:

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“Phoebe’s sapphire region’d star”, and “Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky”. A little later in
the poem we are given pictures of a forest, mountains, streams, birds, breezes, and Dryads lulled
to sleep on the moss. One of the most exquisitely sensuous pictures comes at the end where we
see a bright torch burning in the casement to make it possible for Cupid[1]to enter the temple in
order to make love to Psyche.
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
To let the warm Love in!
In the Ode on Melancholy, again, we have several sensuous pictures. There is the rain failing from
a cloud above and reviving the drooping flowers below and covering the green hill in an “April
shroud”. There is the morning rose; there are the colours produced by the sunlight playing on wet
sand; and there is the wealth of “globed peonies”. And then there is another exquisitely sensuous
picture.
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
The Ode on a Grecian Urn contains a series of sensuous pictures—passionate men and
gods chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players playing their ecstatic music, the fair youth trying
to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the tree enjoying an everlasting spring, etc. The ecstasy
of the passion of love and of youth is beautifully depicted in the following lines:
More happy love! more happy happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young.
The Ode to a Nightingale is one of the finest examples of Keats’s rich sensuousness. The lines in
which the poet expresses of passionate desire for some Provencal wine or the red wine from the
fountain of the Muses appeal to both our senses of smell and taste:
O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South,
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene…….
These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, merry-making,
drinking and dancing. Similarly the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is highly
pleasing. Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by
stars. The rich feast of flowers described in the stanza that follows is one of the outstanding
beauties of the poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the
fast-fading violets, the coming musk-rose—all this is a delight for our senses.
In the Ode to Fancy, we have a series of pictures which please our senses. The fruits of
autumn, buds and bells of May, the sweet singing of the birds, the various flowers—the daisy, the
marigold, the lily, the primrose-are a kind of feast which we enjoy as we go through the poem.
In the Ode to Autumn, the bounty of the season has been described with all its sensuous
appeal. The whole landscape is made to appear fresh and scented. There is great concentration in

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each line of the opening stanza. Each line is like the branch of a fruit tree laden with fruit to the
breaking point. The vines suggesting grapes, the apples, the gourds, the hazels with their sweet
kernel, the bees suggesting honey—all these appeal to our senses of taste and smell.
Sensuality Rather Than Sensuousness in Some of the Poems
Thus Keats always selects the objects of his description and imagery with a keen eye on
their sensuous appeal. This sensuousness is the principal charm of his poetry. Sometimes this
sensuousness deteriorates into sensuality. In other words, Keats often shows a tendency to dwell
too much upon the charms of the feminine body and refers to the lips, checks, and breasts a little
more than is necessary. In Sleep and Poetry, he describes that stage in his poetic career when he
will catch the beautiful nymphs in shady places and make love to them:
Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,—
Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white Into a pretty shrinking with
a bite
As hard as lips can make it.
In the Ode to Fancy, he gives us a picture of Hebe whose skirt falls to, the ground and on seeing
whose naked beauty Jove is filled with passion:
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,
And Jove grew languid.
In The Eve of St. Agnes, Porphyro almost swoons with passion. When he melts into the dream of
Madeline, there is “solution sweet”. This phrase is generally taken to mean the sexual love-making
of Porphyro and Madeline.
Sensuousness in the Sonnets
In a sonnet, I Cry Your Mercy, Keats, addressing a sweet-heart, says that he would like to
possess her wholly and completely:
O! let me have thee whole, all, all be mine!
That shape, that fairness, that sweet minor zest
Of love, your kiss; those hands, those eyes divine,
That warm, white, lucent, million-pleasured breast:
In another sonnet, he expresses a desire to spend his life with his head resting upon the bosom of
his beloved:
Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.
Thus sometimes Keats’s imagination runs riot.

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Keats’s Pictorial Quality

Keats’s Pictorial Quality
One of the Greatest Word-Painters
Keats is one of the greatest word-painters in English poetry. The pictorial quality
in his poetical work stands above all its other qualities. Picture follows picture in quick
succession in his poems and each picture is remarkable for its vividness and minuteness
of detail. His images are concrete and stand in a striking contrast with Shelley’s images
which are abstract arid vague.
The Eve of St. Agnes is literally full of pictures. We have the hare limping through the
frozen grass; the frosted breath of the Beadsman “taking flight for heaven”; the aged
creature Angela “shuffling along with ivory-headed wand”; the little moonlight room,
pale, latticed, chill and silent as a tomb; Madeline on whose fair breast the wintry moon
threw its light and whose rich attire came rustling to her knees, etc. Each image is
distinctly drawn and we are enabled fully to see it. In The Eve of St. Mark,we have two
very vivid pictures, one depicting the out-door scene in the street, and the other
describing the maiden over her book in the fire-lit chamber. In the Ode to
Autumn, Autumn has been represented in the concrete forms of a reaper, winnower,
gleaner, etc. The Ode on a Grecian Urncontains a series of vivid and concrete pictures—
passionate men and gods chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players playing their
ecstatic music, the fair youth trying to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the trees,
the towns people going to a place of worship in order to offer a sacrifice with a
mysterious priest to lead them, the little town which will always remain desolate.
Pictures of Inanimate Objects
While giving us the pictures of inanimate objects, Keats often invests them with
life and with the power to feel, see and think so as to make his pictures more vivid. He
tells of dead and senseless things in terms of life, movement and feeling. In The Eve of St.
Agnes, for instance, he draws the pictures of the statues of kings and queens and
represents them as capable of feeling cold:
Again, he refers to the angels carved in stone and attributes to them the power to see:
Sensuous Imagery
Another point about Keats’s pictorial quality is that most of his pictures are
sensuous in appeal. In other words, his pictures appeal to our sense of sight, sense of taste,
sense of smell, sense of hearing, and sense of touch. I Stood Tiptoe, Sleep and
Poetry, and Endymion contain numerous such pictures. Many of his pictures are
colourful. In the richness of colour, no picture can surpass Keats’s description inThe Eve
of St. Agnes of a high window decorated with “carven imageries” and “diamonded with
panes of quaint device”, with “splendid dyes” like “the tiger-moth’s deep-damask’d
wings”. The description of the dainties arranged by Porphyro on a table in the same poem
appeals to the senses of sight, smell, and taste simultaneously: Porphyro puts candied
apple, plums, jellies, manna, dates, syrops on golden dishes and bright baskets of

32
wreathed silver. In the Ode to Autumn, the first stanza is a rich feast of apples, grapes,
hazels, gourd, and honey. InFancy, again, the poet appeals to our senses of smell and
sight by describing flowers of all kinds and colours: the daisy, the marigold, the lily, the
primrose, the hyacinth. Our fancy, says the poet, can mix up the pleasures of all seasons
for our enjoyment “like three fit wines in a cup”. Describing an imaginary sweetheart in
the same poem, he tells us that she will have a waist and a side as white as Hebe’s. And
then follows a lovely picture of Hebe’s petticoat slipping down to her feet, and Jove
becoming languid with passion on beholding her physical charms. The Ode on
Indolence contains a number of pictures which bear witness to Keats’s gift of concrete and
sensuous imagery. Each of the three figures is given a separate life in the poem and is fully
individualised. There is a lovely picture of a cloudy morning when the air smells of coming
rain.
More Examples
In the Ode to Psyche, again, we have several concrete and sensuous pictures. There
is the lovely picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an embrace in the deep grass. An
exquisite picture is given in the two lines in which Keats describes, with rare felicity of
word and phrase, the flowers of different colours. The lines which describe the beauty of
Psyche and the paraphernalia of worship in a temple have also a sensuous quality.
The Ode to a Nightingale contains some of the finest pictures of Keats. The lines in which
the poet expresses a passionate desire for some Provencal wine or the red wine from the
fountain of the Muses, have a rich appeal. Then there is the magnificent picture of the
moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars. The rich feast of flowers that Keats gives
us in the poem is one of its outstanding beauties. Apart from these sensuous pictures,
there is also a vivid and pathetic image of Ruth when, sick for home, she stood tearful
amid the alien corn. The following lines contain an unforgettable picture, wonderful for
its suggestiveness and mystery:
The same that oft-times hath
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Detailed and Elaborate Imagery
Much of the imagery in the poetry of Keats is detailed and elaborate and bears
witness to his powers of minute observation. This is particularly true of’ his pictures of
Nature for describing the beauties of which Keats had a rare gift. Picture of Nature are
plentiful in / Stood Tiptoe, Sleep and Poetry, Endymion, Hyperion, the Ode to
Autumn, and the Ode to a Nightingale.
The Concreteness of the Imagery and its Effect
The concreteness of Keats’s images impresses them on our minds. Many of these
images were drawn from his own observation of English woods and gardens, sea-side and
brook-side; and he is one of the most enthusiastic of poets in depicting these scenes. But
he also drew his images from regions far removed from his personal experience—from the
ancient world of “emperor and clown” the Biblical world of Ruth “amid the alien corn”, or
the world of medieval romance. Ancient Greece serves as the setting in

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his Endymion, Lamia, and Hyperion. Boccaccio’s Italy is the setting of his Isabella, or
The Poet of Basil. And the Gothic Middle Ages form the background in both The Eve of
St. Agnes and The Eve of St. Mark. And in all cases he achieved conspicuous success, even
though his knowledge of past ‘ages in foreign lands was not based on a first-hand study of
foreign languages, but on a careful study of secondary sources and on his own poetic
intuition.
Keats' "Endymion"
An Allegorical Meaning in This Poem
Endymion was written between April and November, 1817. At first Keats thought of the
poem only as a vehicle for the story of Endymion which he would decorate as beautifully as he
could. But a perusal of the poem in the context of his letters of 1817 and early 1818, shows that
certain ideas had been gathering form in Keats’s mind, especially when he was writing Book III.
Consequently an allegorical meaning in the poem is definitely perceptible. Certain critics have
worked out extended allegories in their interpretation of the poem.
The Poem, a Test of Keats’s Poetic Powers

Endymion is a poem of discovery in which Keats attempted to test his poetic powers. “It
will be a test”, he wrote to his brother in the spring of 1817, “a trial of my powers of imagination
and chiefly my invention which is a rare thing indeed—by which I must make four thousand
lines of one bare circumstance and fill them with poetry”.
The Critics’ Unfavourable Reception of the Poem
The poem got an unfavourable reception from critics. The Blackwood and
the Quarterly came out with very adverse reviews of the poem. Keats, with his sensitive
temperament, took the condemnation of these journals deeply to heart, though it would be
wrong to think that he was killed by criticism—”snuffed out by an article”. He was deeply injured
by the attacks, but he tried to ignore them. In fact he was himself aware of the faults and
shortcomings of the poem, and hinted at these in his preface to the poem. His preface is a
revealing piece of self-criticism and deserves to be quoted: “Knowing within myself the manner
in which this poem has been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it public.
What manner I mean will be quite clear to the reader, who must soon perceive great
inexperience, immaturity, and every error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
accomplished. The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible, are not of such
completion as to warrant their passing the press; nor should they if I thought a year’s
castigation would do them any good;—it will not: the foundations are too sandy. It is just that
this youngster should die away: a sad thought for me, if I had not some hope that while it is
dwindling I may be plotting, and fitting myself for verses fit to live.
“This may be speaking too presumptuously, and may deserve a punishment: but no
feeling man will be forward to inflict it: he will leave me alone, with the conviction that there is
not a fiercer hell than the failure in a great object…….

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“The imagination of a boy is healthy, and the mature imagination of a man is healthy,
but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the character undecided,
the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted: thence proceeds mawkishness, and all the
thousand bitters which those men I speak of must necessarily taste in going over the following
pages.”
Written Independently But Without Judgment
In a letter he wrote: “J.S. is perfectly right in regard to the ‘slip-shod Endymion’.That it
is so is no fault of mine. No! though it may sound a little paradoxical, it is as good as/I had power
to make it by myself. Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view
asked advice, and trembled over every page, it would not have been written, for it is not in my
nature to fumble. I will write independently. I have written independently without judgment—I
may write independently and with judgment,hereafter. The genius of poetry must work out its
salvation in man…..I was never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the
greatest.”
The First and the Second Parts of the Poem
The first book of Endymion is entirely introductory, and merely sets forth the feeling of
puzzlement of the love-sick shepherd-prince, the hero, who appears at a festival of his people
held in honour of the god Pan, and who is afterwards urged by his sister Peona to reveal to her
the secret of the passion which is consuming him. Endymion tells Peona die story of those
celestial visits which he is not certain whether he has experienced or merely dreamed. In the
second book the hero sets out in search of the celestial visitor, and is led by obscure signs and
impulses through a mysterious and almost trackless region of adventure. Keats lets himself go
without a check in describing the natural and architectural wonders, unlocalised and half-
realised, in this book. A Naiad, in the disguise of a butterfly, leads Endymion to her spring, and
there reveals herself and counsels him not to give up hope. An airy voice next invites him to
descend “into the sparry hollows of the world”, which done, he gropes his way to a subterranean
temple where he is admitted to the presence of the sleeping Adonis and where Venus herself
appears to give encouragement to Endymion. From there the hero wanders on by dizzy paths
and precipices, and forests of leaping, ever-changing fountains. After seeing the vision of Cybele,
Endymion is conveyed on an eagle’s back down a deep descent. He soon sees a jasmine bower
where his celestial mistress again visits him. Next he encounters the streams, and hears the
voices, of Arethus and Alpheus; and utters a prayer to his goddess in their behalf.
The Next Part of the Poem
Hitherto Endymion has been wholly absorbed in his own passions and adventures. But
now the fates of others claim his sympathy: first those of Alpheusand Arethusa, and next,
throughout nearly the whole of the third book, those of Glaucus and Scylla. Keats handles this
latter legend with great freedom omitting the transformation of Scylla by Circe into a devouring
monster, and making the enchantress punish her rival not by this vile transformation but by
death, or rather a trance resembling death, from which after many ages Glaucus is enabled by
Endymion’s help to rescue her and, together with her, the whole sorrowful community of true
lovers drowned at sea.
The Fourth Part

35
In the fourth book, Endymion goes through a chain of adventures which seem certainly
to have a moral and allegorical meaning. Returning to upper air, Endymion soon half-forgets
his celestial mistress for the charms of an Indian maiden. This mysterious Indian maiden proves
in fact to be no other than his goddess herself in disguise. But it is long before he discovers this,
and in the mean time he is conducted to her through a bewildering series of aerial ascents,
descents, enchanted slumbers and Olympian visions. All these, his broodings in
the Cave of Quietude, his illusions and awakenings, his final farewell to mortality and to Peona,
and his re-union with his celestial mistress in her own shape, make up a narrative which is very
involved and confusing.
A Parable of the Soul’s Pursuit of the Ideal
Endymion may be regarded as a parable of a soul’s experience in pursuit of the ideal.
The argument of the poem seems to be as follows: “Let a soul enamoured of the ideal once suffer
itself to forget its goal, and to quench for a time its longings in the real, nevertheless it will be
still haunted by that lost vision; amidst all intoxications, disappointment and lassitude will still
dog it, until it awakes at last to find that the reality which has thus allured it derives from the
ideal its power to charm,—that it is after all but a reflection from the ideal, a phantom of it.”
The Need of Service to Human Beings
The poem also implies that the pursuit of beauty as no aim in life is only justified when it
is accompanied by the idea of devotion to human service. It is when Endymion, in his adventure
with Glaucus, allows himself to be diverted from his own quest for the sake of relieving the
sorrows of others, that the hope which before seemed ever to elude him draws at last nearer to
fulfilment. Endymion, kissed by the moon-goddess, is the human soul awakened to ideal truth
and goodness, and the way to the ideal lies through experience and through sympathy with
human suffering. Endymion is the poet in his pursuit of ideal beauty. And he is also Keats
himself, learning about life and poetry.
An Immature Poem But a Beautiful One
Endymion is undoubtedly an immature poem and has its faults. But it is a poem of too
many beauties to be ignored or to die. Every reader must take pleasure in some of its passages
and episodes. The account of the feast of Pan, for instance, contains passages which in the
quality of direct Nature-interpretation are scarcely to be surpassed in poetry:
rain-scented eglantine
Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man’s voice was on the mountains; and the mass
Of Nature’s lives and wonders puls’d ten-fold,
To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
No less excellent is the realisation, in the course of the same episode, of the true spirit of ancient
pastoral life and worship; the hymn to Pan especially, expressing perfectly the meaning of the
Greek myth to Greeks and enriching it with touches of northern feeling.
In Book II, there shine out at intervals strokes of true poetry:

36
He sinks adown a solitary glen;

Where there was never sound of mortal men,
Saving, perhaps, some snow-light cadences
Melting to silence, when upon the breeze
Some holy bark let forth an anthem sweet
To cheer itself to Delphi:—
Similarly the personalities of old religion are strongly conceived and realised; for instance,
mother Cybele who came alone “in sombre chariot”:
dark foldings thrown
About her majesty, and front death-pale,
With turrets crowned.
In Book III, Keats brings home his version of the myth of Glaucus with strong and often exquisite
effect to the imagination. The picture of Circe pouring the magic phial upon her victims is most
vivid, and the speech with which the enchantress turns and scathes her unhappy lover is most
telling. In the same book, the description of the sunk treasures lying on the ocean-floor deserves
comparison with the famous similar passage in Shakespeare’s Richard III.In Book IV, we have
the strain of lyric poetry which Keats puts into the mouth of the supposed Indian maiden when
she tells her story. There are certainly faults and immaturities in this lyrical speech, but it shows
a great mastery over various sources of imaginative and musical effect, and it touches in a
thrilling manner various chords of the reader’s spirit. A mood of tender irony and wistful pathos,
a keen sense of the immemorial romance of India and the east, a power of evoking remote, weird
and beautiful associations with single words, clear visions of Greek beauty—all these elements
are here blended.
Two Exquisite Lyrics in the Poem
The speech begins with a tender invocation to sorrow, and then conjures up the image of
a deserted maiden beside Indian streams. This is followed by the entry of the Asian Bacchus on
his march, with a detailed picture of the god and the mob of his followers. Next comes the
challenge of the maiden to the Maenads and Satyrs, and their choral answers. Finally, returning
to the opening motive, the lyric ends as it began with an exquisite strain of love-lorn pathos:
Come then, Sorrow!

Sweetest Sorrow!
Like an own babe I nurse thee on my breast:
I thought to leave thee,
And deceive thee,
But now of all the world I love thee best.
There is not one,
No, no, not one
But thee to comfort a poor lonely maid;
Thou art her mother
And her brother,
Her playmate, and her wooer in the shade.

37
The high-water mark of poetry in Endymionis thus reached in the two lyrics of the first and
fourth books. Indeed, a reader’s taste for literature may be determined by the degree to which
he is able to appreciate and enjoy these two lyrics.
Beauties and Faults Mingled Together in the Poem

In the main body of the poem, beauties and faults are mingled together. Admirable truth
and charm of imagination, exquisite freshness and felicity of touch mark certain passages. The
very soul of poetry breathes in them. But the poem is also full of faults of execution and taste.
Thus in the tale told by Glaucus, we find a line of strong poetic vision (“Aeaea’s isle was
wondering at the moon”) standing alone in a passage of rambling and ineffective over-honied
narrative. Or, again, a forced and vulgar couplet like the following:
I look’d—’twas Scylla! Cursed, cursed Circe!
O vulture-witch, hast never heard of mercy?
is followed three lines further by a masterly touch of imagination and the heart:
Cold, O cold indeed
Were her fair limbs, and like a common weed
The sea-swell took her hair.
A tendency to linger and luxuriate over every imagined pleasure with an over-fond and doting
relish is unmistakable in the poem. The writer’s creative impulse is wayward and shows a lack’
of discipline and discrimination. Keats outdoes even Spenser in letting invention ramble and
loiter uncontrolled, with imagination at its heels to dress if possible in living beauty the wonders
that it finds. Sometimes the imagination is equal to the task and sometimes not. Even
invention occasionally flags, and catches hold of any idle clue the rhyme holds out: —
A nymph of Dian’s
Wearing a coronal of tender scions:
Does yonder thrush,
Schooling its half-fledged little ones to brush
About the dewy forest, whisper tales?
Speak not of grief, young stranger, or cold snails
Will slime the rose to-night.
Keats’s Extension of the Resources of the Language
The poet endeavours also to extend the resources of the language, and to make them
adequate to the range and freshness of his imagery, by the use of compound and other adjectival
coin ages which are sometimes legitimate or even happy, but are often fantastic and tasteless:
“far-spooming Ocean”, “eye-earnestly”, “dead-drifting”, “their surly eyes brow-hidden”, “nervy
knees”, “surgy murmurs”. There is a sprinkling, too, of such archaisms as “shent”, “sith”, and
“seemlihed”. There are arbitrary verbal forms—”to folly”, “to monitor”, “to fragment up”. Thus,
even when in the other qualities of poetry the work is good, in diction and expressions it wavers
and is full of oddities and discords.
The Metre; the Rhyme; and the Rhythm

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In rhythm, Keats here follows the method he had adopted in Sleep and Poetrykeeping the
sentence independent of the metre, putting full pauses anywhere in his lines rather than at the
end and avoiding any regular beat upon the rhyme. Leigh Hunt thought that Keats had carried
this method too far, even to the negation of metre. But Keats, even where his verse runs most
diffusely, rarely fails in delicacy of musical and metrical ear, or in variety and elasticity of
sentence structure.
An Intricate and Flowery Narrative

The “one bare circumstance” of the story was expanded by Keats through four long books
of intricate and flowery narrative, in the course of which the poet pauses again and again to
linger or deviate, developing every incident into a thousand circumstances, every passion into
a world of subtleties. He interweaves with the central myth the love of the moon-goddess and
Endymion’s quest for her whatever others pleased him best, as those of Pan, of Venus and
Adonis, of Cybele, of Alpheus and Arethusa, of Glaucus and Scylla, of Circe, of Neptune, and of
Bacchus. The poet leads us through labyrinthine transformations, and on endless journeys
under the earth and over the floor of the ocean. The scenery of the poem, indeed, is often not
merely of a Gothic vastness and intricacy; there is something of Oriental bewilderment, an
Arabian Nights jugglery with space and time, in die vague suddenness with which its changes
occur.
Keats’s Preface to the Poem
As the best criticism on Keats’sEndymion is in his own preface, so its best defence is in a
letter he wrote six months after its publication. “It is as good”, he says, “as I had power to make
it by myself…..I have written independently without judgment. I may write independently
andwith judgment hereafter…...”
Keats’s Effeminate Treatment of His Heroes
In Keats’s treatment of his young heroes, there is always a touch of effeminacy or
physical softness. The influence of passion is apt to make these heroes fever and to unman them
quite. A helpless submission of all the faculties to the passion of love proved to be a weakness of
Keats’s own nature. He partly knew it, and could not help it: but the result is that the love
passages of Endymion,in spite of their beautiful imagery, yield little pleasure to the reader. On
the other hand, in respect of other feelings he shows not only a great rhetorical facility, but the
signs often of a lively dramatic power; as in the protest by which Peona tries to make her brother
Endymion ashamed of his weakness:
Is this the cause?
This all? yet it is strange, and sad, alas!
That one who through this middle earth should pass
Most like a sojourning demi-god, and leave
His name upon the harp-string, should achieve
No higher bard than simple maidenhood,

39
Singing alone, and fearfully,—how the blood left

His young cheek; and how he used to stray
He knew not where; and how he would say, Nay,
If any said ’twas love: and yet it was love;
What could it be but love?.....
Aileen Ward on Endymion
The Sensual Character of the Poem

Aileen Ward points out that most critics have moralised this poem into an allegory of a
kind of super-sexual love for a super-sensuous beauty. Endymion’s wanderings are regarded as
the quest-of the poetic soul for communion with the ideal, and his painful vacillations between
the maiden and the goddess, and the final change of the one into the other, are taken to indicate
the seeming conflict and ultimate harmony of the actual beauties of this world with ideal Beauty.
But Aileen Ward does not accept this allegorical interpretation. According to her, Keats, with
his hunger for a life of sensations rather than of thoughts, was not the kind of poet to contrive
an allegorical system. Aileen Ward also points out that none of the first readers of this poem
found any hint of allegory in it. According to this critic, the poem is about sensual love.
Endymion represents not the poetic soul but the ideal lover; his adventures are an assertion of
“holiness of the heart’s affections”, and it is only because the poem expresses such an exalted idea
of sexual love that the Victorian critics with their prudish outlook regarded Endym-ion’s quest
as having a different goal.
A Young Man’s Discovery of the True Nature of Love
Discarding the allegorical approach toEndymion, Aileen Ward goes on to say that the
poem certainly has a symbolic significance, which might be defined simply as a young man’s
discovery of the true nature of love. Sexual love, as Endymion describes it near the end of the
first book, is the highest reach of happiness, and as such it is the crown of all other values and
the worthiest goal of our strivings.
A Work of Romantic Art
For all its obvious faults of immaturity, Endymion is a uniquely interesting work. It is a
young man’s poem about a central experience of young manhood. Inevitably it has been
compared to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Endymion lacks the verbal control and dramatic
power of Shakespeare’s poem; but Shakespeare was twenty-eight when he wrote the poem, and
Keats was only twenty-one. Keats was handicapped not only by his youth but by the sentimental
tradition of his time, which left him no acceptable idiom for dealing forthrightly, as Shakespeare
could, with physical love. For better, for worse,Endymion is a work of romantic art.
Keats’s Own Assessment of the Poem
And the final value of the poem is a peculiarly romantic one—its value to the poet
himself. Endymion represents almost half of the poetry Keats published in his life-time, and
occupied him through nearly one-fourth of his poetic career; writing it was a major factor in his

40
creative development. Keats himself was the first to value the poem in this fashion, and this was
all the value he eventually allowed it. “It is as good as I had power to make it—by myself, he
wrote. “Had I been nervous about its being a perfect piece, and with that view asked advice, and
fumbled over every page, it would not have been written.” In the end, he saw that, his having
written it mattered more than what he had written. The writing of this poem brought him
considerable valuable experience. Endymion made Keats a poet, whatever Keats made
of Endymion. In the very experience of failure, he discovered the truth of achievement: “That
which is creative must create itself.”
The Chief Fault of the Poem
The chief fault of the poem, Keats realised, was the inexperience of life underlying the
original conception. “The imagination of boy is healthy”, he wrote, “and the mature imagination
of a man is healthy; but there is a space of life between, in which the soul is in a ferment, the
character undecided, the way of life uncertain, the ambition thick-sighted”—and from this
sprang the “mawkishness” which he condemned in his preface to the poem.
Sidney Colvin on Endymion
Prodigality of Incidental and Superfluous Beauties
A general characteristic of Keats’s favourite Elizabethan poetry is its prodigality of
incidental and superfluous beauties. Even in drama, it takes the powers of a Shakespeare to keep
the vital play of character and passion unsmothered by such beauties and in most narrative
poems of the age the quality is quite unchecked. To Keats, at the time when he
wrote Endymion, such incidental and secondary luxuriance constitution an essential, if not the
chief, charm of poetry. “I think poetry should surprise by a fine excess”, he writes. And with
reference to his own poem during its progress, he says, “It will be a test, a trial of my powers of
imagination, and chiefly of my invention—which is a rare thing indeed—by which I must make
four thousand lines of one bare circumstance, and fill them with poetry”.
Graham Hough on Endymion
The Leading Idea of the Poem
The theme of the poem is one that is endemic in romantic literature—the pursuit in the
world of an ideal love who has been glimpsed dimly in vision. So far it is the same as that of
Shelley’s Alastor. Keats embodies it in a rehandling of the Greek fable of Diana’s love for
Endymion, a mortal shepherd: but he lays emphasis on Endymion’s love for Diana rather than
on hers for him. The goddess visits Endymion in sleep, and when he awakes he resolves to seek
her through the world. Alter numerous confusing adventures he meets an Indian maiden who is
sad and home-sick, lamenting a lost love. He is sorry for her, and because he is sorry for her
comes to love her; and for a time he forgets his goddess. This seems an infidelity, but is not really
so, for in the end Diana and the Indian maiden turn out to be the same. That is to say, ideal
beauty can only be achieved by love and sympathy for the beauty imanent in human life. The
conclusion is quite different from that of Alastor where the hero, not finding his veiled maid, can
only die disappointed. Keats does not accept the frank Shelleyan dichotomy between the world
of experience and the world of imagination. Endymion succeeds in his quest, but only by
apparently compromising his love for a goddess by his love for a mortal. Keats is recurring here
to the idea we have met already in Sleep and Poetry, and that we are to meet again in the
second Hyperion; the idea that love of beauty, like other passions, cannot exist fruitfully in

41
isolation, that it can only fulfil itself through participation in the actual conditions of human life.
Thus the leading idea of Endymion is not something mawkish or undecided, but a quite vigorous
existentialist principle that Keats saw clearly from the beginning of his life.”
Keats' Isabella, The Eve of St. Mark, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, Lamia
“Isabella”, Based Upon a Story from Boccaccio

Isabella was planned and begun in February, 1818 and finished in the course of the
next too months. The poem is based upon a story from Boccaccio telling of the love of a
damsel of Messina for a Young man in the service of her merchant-brothers, with its tragic
end and pathetic sequel.
Keats transfers the scene of the story fromMessina to Florence, and he adorns and
amplifies Boccaccio’s story, enriching it with tones of sentiment and colours of romance,
and dwelling over every image of beauty or passion. His adornments and
embellishments are, however, not inordinate as they were in the case ofEndymion. His
powers of imagination and of expression have now gained strength and discipline; and
his characters make themselves seen and felt in living shape, action and motive. The
poem is not completely free from false touches and misplaced beauties. For instance, in
the lines
his erewhile timid lips grew bold
And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme.
we have a false touch in the sugared taste frequent in his early verses. And in the call of
the wicked brothers to Lorenzo—
Today we purpose, aye this hour we mount
To spur three leagues towards the Apennine,
Come down, we pray thee, ere the hot sun count
His dewy rosary on the eglantine,—
the last two lines are beautiful indeed; yet they are misplaced in the villainous mouths
that speak it. Moreover, the language of Isabella is still occasionally slip-shod, and there
are turns and passages where we feel that, as in Endymion, the poetic power has been
subordinated to the chance dictation or suggestion of the rhyme. These minor faults
apart, Isabella is conspicuous for its power and charm.
Imaginative Vitality and Truth, Combined with Beauty
The true test of a poem like Isabella is that it should combine imaginative vitality
and truth with beauty and charm. This test Isabella admirably passes. There is, for
instance, the account of the dream which comes to the heroine of her lover’s decaying
corpse:

42
Its eyes, though wild, were still all dewy-bright

With love, and kept all phantom fear aloof
From the poor girl by the magic of their light.
These lines have a true poignancy of human tenderness, while all the horror and grimness
of the picture have been kept out. Again, the scene is realised with unerring vision in the
lines which describe Isabella’s action at her lover’s burial place:
She gaz’d into the fresh-thrown mould, as though
One glance did fully all its secrets tell;
Clearly she saw, as other eyes would know
Pale limbs at bottom of a crystal well;
Upon the murderous spot she seem’d to grow,
Like to a native lily of the dell:
…………………………………………
…………………………………………
Then ‘gan she work again; nor stay’d her care,
But to throw back at times her veiling hair.
These are remarkable lines, and only the best poets can combine such concentrated force
and beauty of conception with such a limpid and flowing case of narrative. The swift
despairing gaze of the girl, the simile of the lily, striking the note of beauty, while it
intensifies the impression of her rooted fixity of posture and purpose; the sudden solution
of that fixity into vehement action as she begins to dig; then the first reward of her labour,
in the shape of a glove which she kissed and which she put in her bosom; then the
resumption and continuance of her labour, with gestures of vital dramatic truth and
grace—all these are most effectively conveyed. Poetry had always come to Keats as
naturally as leaves to a tree; and now when it achieved a quality like this, he had fairly
earned the right to look down upon the fine artificers of the school of Pope.
An Adverse Comment on the Poem “Isabella”
Roger Sharrock, however, makes an adverse comment on Isabella. According to
this critic, this poem is “a self-conscious exercise in sentiment, even though the writer
looks upon love as the highest value and therefore the most fitting subject for poetry”.
Keats himself, this critic tells us, recognised the artificiality of his own love-melancholy.
Roger Sharrock goes on to say: “Its manner, working through the slow and decorative
stanza, is diffused and luxuriant; a brief tragic tale from Boccaccio is presented at one
remove so as to extract the last drop of sentimental pathos. The first embrace of the lovers
reveals a view of life that would contain experience within the bounds of ‘poesy’:
So said, his erewhile timid lips grew bold,
And poested with hers in dewy rhyme:
Great bliss was with them, and great happiness
Grew, like a lusty flower in June’s caress.

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The image suggests that the kiss exists in order that a poet may write about it; it also
suggests that love is a mode of poetry conceived as a state of luxurious contemplation
beyond the cares of the ordinary world. A graceful and accomplished artifice of sorrow is
imposed on the story; there is a kind of self-conscious tuning-up of the poetry to make it
equal to contain a theme:
O Melancholy, linger here awhile!
O Music, Music, breathe despondingly!
O Echo, Echo, from some sombre isle,
Unknown, Lethean, sigh to us—O sigh!
The method may be described as a rhetorical lyricism. There are frequent apostrophes
like those above and those to ‘sad Melpomene’ and to ‘eloquent and famed Boccaccio’,
and many highly-mannered repetitions and declamations. The management of some of
these rhetorical construction is very beautiful, for instance, the description of Isabella’s
grief, a variation on the word ‘forget’:
And she forgot the stars, the moon, the sun.
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,
And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze;
She had no knowledge when the day was done,
And the new mood she saw not…..
Sorrow is stylised like a mourning figure on an urn. The long declamatory passages
disperse the emotion and cause it to cling to detached and pictorial movement of the story.
A repetitive series of questions fruitlessly probes the origins of the brothers’ commercial
and family pride which has made them decide to dispose of their sister’s lover: ‘Why were
they proud ?......”
Keats’s Own Assessment of “Isabella”

Isabella was written most probably in March-April, 1818. It is a straight narrative,
simple, romantic and lyrical—‘with no palpable design upon us’. Both Isabella and the
first version of Hyperion were written against a background of Tom’s illness, and both
bear the marks of it. The strength of Endymion, all its flaws apart—had been its nervous
energy, its rich sense of vigorous, organic life. Here in Isabella, for all the loveliness that
plays about the surface, there is an impotence at the heart of the poem......The poem is
not easy to place in the context of Keats’s developing ideas. Apart from the dreaminess of
a young man’s idealised love-fantasies in the earlier stanzas, it does not give us the feeling
that his own personal allegory is woven into it; the beauties where they occur, are
detached not a piece of the fabric of his own being except where, suddenly and perhaps
incongruously, the fierce indignation against tyranny and exploitation breaks out in

44
stanzas 14 and 15. Keats himself came to have serious doubts about the poem and would
have preferred not to publish it. With the experience of the hostile reviews behind him,
he wrote to Richard Woodhouse: “I will give you a few reasons why I should persist in not
publishing The Plot of Basil—it is too smokeable (that is, open to ridicule). There is too
much inexperience of life, and simplicity of knowledge in it Isabella is what I
should call, were I a reviewer, a weak-sided poem with an amusing sober-sadness about
it.”
“The Eve of St-Mark” an Unfinished Poem
The Eve of St. Mark is a fragment based on a popular belief connected with the Eve
of St. Mark, the belief namely, that a person stationed near a church porch at twilight on
that anniversary would see entering the church the apparitions of those about to die, or
to be brought near death, in the ensuing year. Keats’s fragment breaks off before the story
makes any headway, and it is not easy to see how this opening would have led up to
incidents illustrating this belief. There are two main pictures in the poem: the out-door
picture or the city streets in their young spring freshness and Sabbath peace; and the in-
door picture of the maiden reading in her quaint fire-lit chamber. Each picture is
admirably vivid and charming.
An Anticipation of the Pre-Raphaelite School
The interest of the poem lies not in moving narrative, but in (a) its pictorial
brilliance and charm of workmanship; and (b) its relation to and influence on later
English poetry. Keats here anticipates the feeling and method of the Pre-Raphaelite
school. The in-door scene of the girl over her book, with its vivid colour and the
minuteness of suggestive and picturesque detail, is thoroughly in the spirit of Rossetti;
while in the out-door picture we find anticipations of William Morris.
“La Belle Dame Sans Merci”
La Belle Dame Sans Merci can hardly be said to tell a story. It sets before us the
wasting power of love, when either the hostility of fate or a mistaken choice makes of love
not a blessing but a disaster. The wretchedness which the poet describes in the poem is
partly that of his own soul in relation to Fanny Brawne. The imagery of the poem is drawn
from the medieval world of enchantment and knight-errantry, and’ truly expresses the
passion. “To many students the union of infinite tenderness with a weird intensity, the
conciseness and purity of the poetic form, the wild yet simple magic of the cadences, the
perfect inevitable union of sound and sense, make of La Belle Dame Sans Merci the
masterpiece, not only among the shorter poems of Keats, but even among them all.
“Lamia”
Lamia is the tale of a serpent who in the form of a beautiful woman gains the love
of an Athenian youth, but is disenchanted at her wedding feast by a “bald-head
philosopher”, whose “demon eyes” make her “melt into a shade”. The serpent-lady here
is both an enchantress and a victim of enchantments. She builds, by her art, a palace of

45
delights for her lover, until their happiness is shattered by the scrutiny of the philosopher
who represents intrusive and cold-blooded wisdom. Keats himself made the following
observation about this poem: “I am certain there is that sort of fire in it which must take
hold of people in some way—give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation”. There is
undoubtedly much truth in this observation. There is perhaps nothing in all his poetry so
vivid as the picture of the serpent-woman awaiting the touch of Hermes to transform her,
followed by the painful process of the transformation itself. The introductory episode of
Hermes and his nymph is admirably told, though it occupies more space than it should.
Admirable again is the concluding stanza where the merciless gaze of the philosopher
shatters his pupil’s dream of love and beauty, and the lover in losing his illusion loses his
life
An Unequal Poem
The poem has a thrilling vividness of narration in certain parts of it, and much of
the verse has a fine melodious vigour. But the poem is in some parts too feverish, and in
others too unequal. It contains descriptions not entirely successful, as for instance that of
the palace built by Lamia’s magic. In certain reflective passages, Keats relapses into his
early strain of affected ease and fireside triviality. The passage in the first book beginning
“Let the mad poets say whate’er they please”, and the first fifteen lines of the second book
belong to this category. Besides, there is a weakness in the moral of the story:
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
There was an awful rainbow once in heaven;
We know her woof, her texture; she is given
In the dull catalogue of common things.
Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,
Conquer all mysteries by rule and line,
Empty the haunted air and gnomed mine—
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person’d Lamia melt into a shade.
Keats' "Hyperion" (The Two Versions)

I
“Hyperion”, a Fragment
Hyperion was begun by Keats beside his brother’s sickbed in September or October, 1818.
It is to Hyperion that he refers when he speaks in those days of “plunging into abstract images”,
and finding a “feverous relief in the “abstractions” of poetry. These phrases are applicable only to
Hyperion. It was finished some time in April, 1819.

46
Two Versions of “Hyperion”, But Both Incomplete

The subject of Hyperion had long been in Keats’s mind, and both in the text and the
preface of Endymion he indicated his intention to attempt it. At first he thought of the poem to be
written as a “romance”, but his plan changed to that of a blank verse epic in ten books. His purpose
was to describe the warfare of the earlier Titanic dynasty with the later Olympian dynasty of the
Greek gods; and in particular one episode of that warfare, the dethronement of the sun-god
Hyperion and the assumption of his kingdom by Apollo. Hyperion exists in two versions, both
incomplete. The second version was a revision of the first, with the addition of a long induction in
a new style which makes it into a different poem. The two versions of the poem extend over Keats’s
greatest creative period. The first version was written mostly before the great Odes,the second
mostly after them. As a matter of fact, the period covered by Hyperion is the period of Keats’s
most intense experience, both of joy and sorrow, in actual life; and of his most rapid development.
The Theme of the Poem
The theme of the war between the Titans or the earlier generation of gods, and the later
Olympians who overthrew them often occurs in the literature which Keats was fond of reading.
The specific theme, the dethronement of Hyperion, the old sun-god, by Apollo the new, is Keats’s
own. Apollo is also the god of poetry, and as Endymion had symbolised the fate of the lover of
beauty in the world, so the story of Apollo and Hyperion was perhaps going to symbolise the fate
of the poet as creator. Since the poem is unfinished we cannot know.
Milton’s “Paradise Lost” as the Model for Keats’s Poem
The design of Hyperion owes much toMilton. The poem opens in the regular epic manner,
in the middle of the story. The Titans, like Milton’s fallen angels, are already outcasts and have
lost their power. Hyperion alone is not yet over-thrown, and, like Milton’s Satan, he is the one
hope of further existence. The opening scene is followed by a council to discuss the regaining of
the last dominion, in which Enceladus, like Moloch, pronounces his sentence for open war, and
Oceanus, like Belial, stands for more moderate measures. Externally, at least, this is modelled
onParadise Lost, and marks a clear break with the loose and incoherent structure ofEndymion.
Similarities With, and Differences from, “Paradise Lost”
In spite of its fragmentary condition,Hyperion remains Keats’s most imposing piece of
work. According to the publishers, the hostile reception given to Endymiondiscouraged Keats
from continuing with the poem. Keats himself said that he gave it up because of the first excessive
Miltonism of the style. “There were too many Miltonic inversions in it”, he wrote 10 Reynolds.
“Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather in an artist’s humour.” The Miltonic
influence is certainly obvious in the verse and diction of the first Hyperion as it is in the design.
There is, for instance, a constant use of inversions (“stride colossal”, “rest divine”) typical
of Milton’s Latinized style. Especially noticeable is the trick of sandwiching a noun between two
adjectives (“gold clouds metropolitan”). There are other fragments of classical sentence-structure
too:
save what solemn tubes,
B lown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet
And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies.

47
But the poem is hardly Miltonic in any stricter sense. In the matter of rhythm, Keats’s blank verse
has not the flight ofMilton’s. “Its periods do not wheel through such stately evolutions to so
solemn and far-foreseen close; though it indeed lacks neither power nor music.” It is still the verse
of Keats, but immensely purged and strengthened by contact with a severer master. Some of the
most beautiful images in their delicacy and precision are utterly unlike Milton’s generalised verbal
grandeur, and indeed could be by nobody but Keats:
………No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
The Subject-Matter of the First Two Books
The first book of Hyperion gives us a picture of the fallen Titans, with Saturn as the central
figure, but Hyperion as the only one who remains even potentially active. The second book shows
them in council and the vital part of it is undoubtedly the speech of Oceanus. The sum and
substance of his speech is as follows:
My voice is not a bellows unto ire.
Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof
How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:
And in this proof much comfort will
I give, If ye will take that comfort in its truth.
We fall by course of Nature’s law, not force
Of thunder, or of Jove.
Saturn was not the first power in the universe, and should not expect to be the last. Chaos and
darkness produced light: light brought heaven and earth and life itself into existence; and the
Titans were the first-born of life. Just as heaven and earth are more beautiful than chaos and
darkness,
So on our heels a fresh perfection treads,
A power more strong in beauty, born of us
And fated to excel us…..
The Titans should not grieve over the situation and should not envy their successors
……..for ‘tis the eternal law,
That first in beauty shall be first in might.
The simple Clymene follows and supports Oceanus by bearing testimony to the beauty of the
young Apollo’s music, which she has heard. The lesson of all this is thatHyperion is to be a
poem of evolution, of the supersession of lower forms by higher; and that the
successors are to prevail because they are superior in beauty.
The Fragmentary Third Book
In the fragment of the third book the interest shifts from the Titans to the young Apollo.
Mnemosyne (Memory) alone among the Titans has formed relations with the younger gods. She
has watched over the childhood of Apollo, and now she finds him wavering and uncertain of his

48
course. In his talk with her he finds the consciousness of his destiny and assumes his newfound
godhead. At this point the poem breaks off.
Keats’s Inability To Go On With-the Poem
It seems that what began as an epic poem about a mythological conflict has become a
symbolical poem of a different kind. But in the process new difficulties have arisen for the poet.
The conventional epic conflict would have afforded a wealth of scenes and incidents. The new
scheme, of an evolution in beauty, presents far greater problems. It could hardly be put forth in
events and actions, and would not therefore afford material for the ten books originally proposed.
Perhaps there were other difficulties as well. The poem remains unfinished because Keats did not
know how it was to go on.
Keats’s Greek Subject But His Un-Greek Treatment
Although Keats has been called a Greek, he does not write of Greek things in a Greek
manner. The very description of thepalace of Hyperion, with its vague far-dazzling pomps and
phantom-terrors of coming doom, shows that. Keats is here far in workmanship from the Greek
purity and precision of outline, and firm definition of individual images. Some of his pictures of
Nature, too, show not the simplicity of the Greek, but the complexity of the modern, sentiment of
Nature. But Keats shows a thorough grasp of the essential meaning of the war between Titans and
Olympians. He illustrates with great beauty and force (in the speech of Oceanus in the second
book) that essential meaning: the dethronement of an older and ruder worship by one
more advanced and humane, in which ideas of ethics and of arts held a larger place
beside ideas of Nature and her brute powers.
Keats’s Animation of the Colossal Figures
Again, Keats attains great success in conceiving and animating the colossal shapes of the
early gods. He shows a masterly instinct in the choice of comparisons, drawn from Nature by
which he tries to make us realise the voices of those gods, with their personalities between the
elemental and me human.
The Attempt at the Dramatic Presentation of Emotion
Indeed, Hyperion is Keats’s most serious and considerable attempt at the dramatic
presentation of emotion—for the Titans are conceived in human terms, and their sorrows are
human sorrows. There is far greater power, too, of discourse, of argument in verse, than ever
before; there is no parallel in Keats’s earlier work to the speech of Oceanus.
The Merits of the Three Books Which Comprise the Poem
The second book of Hyperion, relating the council of the dethroned Titans, has neither the
sublimity of the first, nor the intensity of the unfinished third. In the first book we have a solemn
vision of the fallen Saturn, followed by a resplendent vision of Hyperion threatened in his empire.
In the third book we see Apollo undergoing a convulsive change under the afflatus of Mnemosyne,
and about to put on the full powers of his godhead. But the third book has a ripeness and
controlled power of its own which place it quite on a level with the other two.

49
One of the Grandest Poems in the English Language

“With a few slips and inequalities, and one or two instances of verbal incorrectness,
Hyperion is indeed one of the grandest poems in the English language, and in its grandeur seems
one of the easiest and most spontaneous. Keats, however, had never been able to apply himself to
it continuously, but only by fits and starts. Partly this was due to the distractions of bereavement,
of material anxiety, and of dawning passion amid which it was begun and continued: partly (if we
may trust the statement of the publishers) to disappointment at the reception of Endymion: and
partly, it is clear, to something not wholly congenial to his powers in the task itself.”
II
The Fall of Hyperion, a Dream
Subsequently Keats re-cast Hyperion into the shape of a vision, which remains equally
unfinished. His new plan was to relate the fall of the Titans not, as before, in direct narrative, but
in the form of a vision revealed and interpreted to him by a goddess of the fallen race. He had
broken off his work on the first Hyperion at the point where Mnemosyne is enkindling the brain
of Apollo with the inspiration of her ancient wisdom. In the second version, Keats identifies this
Greek Mnemosyne, the mother of the Muses, with the Roman Moneta, and makes his
Mnemosyne-Moneta the priestess and guardian of Saturn’s temple. His vision takes him first into
a garden of delicious fruits where he sinks into a slumber and, on waking up, finds himself on the
floor of a huge temple. Presently a voice, the voice of Moneta, summons him to climb the steps
leading to an image beside which she is offering sacrifice. Obeying her with difficulty, he questions
her regarding the mysteries of the place, and learns ‘hat he is standing in thetemple of Saturn.
Then she unveils her face, and on seeing it he feels an irresistible desire to learn her thoughts.
Thereupon he finds himself conveyed in a trance to the ancient scene of Saturn’s overthrow. From
this point Keats begins to make use of the text of the original Hyperion, and the alterations which
he makes are in almost all cases for the worse.
The Beauty of Single Lines and Passages
This second version of Hyperion certainly contains impressive passages, but it contains
others where both rhythm and diction flag. It depends for its beauty far more on single lines and
passages, and less on sustained effects, as compared with the first version. The feast of fruits at
the opening of the second version is, indeed, very rich. The melancholy beauty and awe of the
priestess when she unveils herself is unequalled in Keats’s poetry. But the special interest of the
poem lies in the light which it throws on the condition of his mind, and on his conception of the
poet’s character and lot. When Moneta bids him mount the steps to her side, she says:
“None can usurp this height”, returned that shade,
“But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest
All else who find a haven in the world,
Where they may thoughtless sleep away their days,
If by a chance into this fane they come,
Rot on the pavement where thou rotted’st half.

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………………………………………………..
………………………………………………..
Thou art a dreaming thing;
A fever of thyself: think of the earth:
What bliss, even in hope, is there for thee?
What haven? every creature bath its home,
Every sole man hath days of joy and pain,
Whether his labours be sublime of low—
The pain alone, the joy alone, distinct:
Only the dreamer venoms are his days,
Bearing more we than all his sins deserve.”
Keats means to say that a poet is one who, in order to indulge in dreams, withdraws
himself from the wholesome activities of ordinary men. At first he is lulled to sleep by
the sweets of poetry (symbolised by the fruits of the garden): Awakening, he finds himself on the
floor of a solemn .temple, with Mnemosyne as the priestess. If he is indifferent to the troubles of
his fellow men, he is condemned to perish swiftly and be forgotten. In the view Keats-here
expresses of the function and responsibility of poetry, there is nothing new. Almost from the
beginning, he had looked beyond the mere sweets of poetry towards
a nobler life
Of human hearts.
What is new is the bitterness with which he speaks of the poet’s lot even at its best. He is allowed
to approach the priestess, to commune with her and catch her inspiration, only on condition that
he shares all the troubles of his fellow-men and makes them his own. And even then, his lot is far
harder and less honourable than that of common men.
Other Merits of the Poem
The imagery and description in the second version of Hyperion are shorn of redundancies,
and are far finer for being kept within bounds; and there is an enormous gain of dignity and force
in the presentation of emotion. In that part of the second Hyperion which is merely a re-handling
of the first, Keats removes Miltonisms and other dispensable ornaments. But in the process, he
sacrifices some of his best lines, though there is nothing like the first three hundred lines of the
new Hyperion in Keats’s earlier work. The new induction is, after the Odes, surely Keats’s greatest
verse. Both in reflective and descriptive passages the verse seems to stride instead of to linger, as
Keats’s verse has mostly done hitherto. And the new-found decision of style reflects a new decision
in the handling of ideas.
Graham Hough’s observations

51
“The second Hyperion is cast in the form of a dream, and the added opening describes this
dream and its setting. It begins with a short prologue which affords an excellent example of the
new tense and muscular verse:
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave
A paradise for a sect; the savage, too,
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven! Pity these have not
Traced upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance.
But bare of laurel they live, dream and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,—
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable chain
And dumb enchantment.
This is an attempt to define the position of poetry. The poet has his dreams in common with other
men, but he alone is able to secure them from oblivion. (Again, the thought of the Ode To a
Grecian Urn—only art can endure.) And the poet’s dream differs from the fanatic’s, because it is
for the world, the fanatic’s only for a sect.”
A Synopsis of the Poem
The dream that Keats sees begins in a wood where the poet eats of the fruits and falls into
a deep sleep to find himself, when he wakes up, in a vast shrine. There are steps leading up to an
altar. As the poet approaches the steps, the veiled priestess addresses him:
If thou canst not ascend
These steps, die on the marble where thou art.
When he asks the priestess to explain the mysteries around him,
Are misery, and will not let them rest.”
This is the theme, already familiar in Sleep and Poetry and in the letters: that the poet must not
rest in poetical dreams but must share the sorrows of humanity. In the lines that follow, the theme
is carried further. The actively virtuous are not to be found in the shrine; they are working in the
world. The poet is here because of his weakness, because he is a dreamer. The priestess goes on
to distinguish the poet and the mere dreamer:
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it.

52
She then reveals that the temple is Saturn’s, the only remaining shrine of the old gods, and she is
Moneta, the sole remaining priestess. (Moneta is the Latin name of Mnemosyne.) Then Moneta
unveils herself, and is thus described:
Then I saw a wan face,
Not pin’d by human sorrows, but bright-blanch’d
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
…………………………………………….
………..deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage, it had pass’d
The lily and the snow; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face.
But for her eyes I should have fled away.
The poet asks to be shown the hidden story that lies behind the mysterious temple. She agrees to
reveal it to him, and the story of Hyperion and the Titans, much as it was narrated in the version
of the poem, then begins.
The Place of the Poet in This World, According to Keats
This is Keats’s last attempt to define the place of the poet in the world. The poet is less
than the man of active virtue, and Keats is still absorbed by/ the contrast between the realm of
Flora and the other kingdom that he suspects to lie beyond. He has still not crossed the boundary,
but he knows more of what to expect on the journey. It is notable how much of Keats’s poetry is
about poetry, its function, its glories, and its limitations. It is as though he is perpetually trying to
find a bridge between art and life, but is perpetually led back to art itself. InHyperion, Keats draws
two distinctions: one between the practical and the visionary mind; and the other between the
creative visionary, the poet, and the mere dreamer who vexes the world with visions that he can
do nothing to transmute into reality.
The View Expressed by Robert Bridges
Robert Bridges points out that the subject of Hyperion “lacks the solid basis of outward
event by which an epic maintains its interest; there is little but imagination, and a one-sidedness
or incompleteness of that; a languor which lingers in the main design”.
H.W. Garrod’s Opinion
H.W. Garrod agrees with this opinion and goes on to add that it was because of his shyness
of the actual that Keats adopted an allegorical design in writing Hyperion (both
versions). Hyperion is, in an allegorical form, the epic of the Revolutionary Idea, an idea which is
figured as Jove deposing Saturn, and Apollo ousting Hyperion. Hyperion is the last of the Titans
to fall before the new order. It is in the nature of things that periodic storms of time should shatter
material institutions, the laboriously-built fabric of tradition and habit. Hyperion cannot stay; or
he stays only to view
The misery his radiance has betrayed
To the most hateful seeing of itself.
Hyperion has outlived his world. The hope which the older gods repose in him is half-hearted;
and in fact the order which they represent has fallen from their want of faith in him, or from a
mutual breach of sympathy.

53
Apollo, the usurping god of light, the new poetry, attains godhead in a fashion sufficiently
significant. Keats does not carry the poem further than the beginning of his godhead. This
godhead is not without its birth-pangs:
Soon wild commotions shook him, and made flush
All the immortal fairness of his limbs,
Most like the struggle at the gates of death;
and Keats speaks of him plainly as “dying into life”.
To Live by Dying
Alike of the god of poetry and of the poet upon earth it is true, that their living must be by
dying. It is not by accident that, on the one hand, Hyperion (first version) ends with the death-
shriek of Apollo, with the anguish of the god dying into life, and that on the other hand, all the
emphasis of the second version is thrown on the necessity for the poet of seeing the beauty of the
world through its sorrows, through human suffering:
None can usurp this height, returned that Shade,
But those to whom the miseries of the world
Are misery, and will not let them rest.
In other words, the revolutionary Apollo is to the fallen god what a humanitarian is to a visionary.
Again and again does Keats carry us to this opposition of two kinds of poetry, and again and again
does he shrink back from his own conclusions. Pursuing his epic of the Revolutionary Idea, Keats
was startled into misgiving; some disquiet of the creating imagination assailed him; he felt himself
brought up sharply against the need of defining, the need of clarifying his own conception. What
truly was this god, who thus dies into life? and into what order of life does this dying in fact
conduct him? Hyperion, the first version (of the volume of 1820) leaves the question without
answer; indeed, that it puts the question we should scarcely know except for Hyperion, the second
version. It is even possible that, in the version printed in 1820, Keats was trying to save his work
out of allegory. It could not be done, and he gave up, coming back to allegory unashamed. The
recoil of intention leaves the first version a fragment of statuesque beauty.
The Great Odes of Keats

The Greek Origin of the Ode
The ode is Greek in origin. It was first written by Pindar an ancient Greek poet. The
Pindaric ode (or the regular Greek ode, as it may be called consists of a composition unit of three
stanzas termed strophe, anti-strophe, and epode—this unity being repeated until the poem is
complete. The pattern of the Pindaric ode is very complex and intricate. Another classical variety
of the ode was originated by Horace, an ancient Roman poet. The Horatian ode uses a particular
stanza throughout and there is no intricacy in this form of ode.

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Some Famous Odes in English

Although both the Pindaric and Horatian odes have been written in English also, most of
the English writers of the ode have ignored the patterns of Pindar and Horace so that their odes
show a complete liberty of line, rhyme arid stanza. Indeed, any impassioned English poem of
unsystematic rhyme, rhythm and metre may be called an ode. Under the control of genius, this
kind of irregular ode has resulted in some of the finest poems in English. Dryden’s Alexander’s
Feast and St. Cecilia’s Day, Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of Immortality, and
Tennyson’s Ode On the Death of the Duke Wellington are examples of irregular odes in which the
poets follow unsystematic rhyme, rhythm and stanza. The regular odes in English, like
Wordsworth’s Ode To Duty and some of the odes of Keats, follow the same stanza throughout
without any variations.
The Subject-Matter of an Ode
The ode may be employed for “the expression of enthusiasm, of passion under control, of
elevated, highly imaginative reflection, of panegyric, or elegy”. An ode usually has a single but
dignified and exalted theme and is, therefore, of a stately character. It is in the nature of an address
or apostrophe. For instance, in Keats’s Ode to Autumn, autumn has been addressed. Similarly in
the Ode to a Nightingale, a nightingale has been addressed. The ode may be called a poetic
oration. Being a sub-division of the lyric, the ode is lyrical in essence. It may be personal in
inspiration like the Ode to a Nightingale, or it may be purely objective like the Ode to Autumn.
The Structure of Keats’s Odes
The structure of the odes of Keats is sometimes regular and simple as in To Fancy, and it
sometimes represents a mean between this and the irregular variety. His most characteristic form
consists of a group of stanzas of highly complex structure, but regular or nearly regular, in their
resemblance to one another. None of Keats’s odes consists of a succession of absolutely dissimilar
stanzas, as does Wordsworth’s Ode on the Intimations of Immortality (where the length of
stanzas varies from 8 lines to 39).
A Note of Solemnity in the Great Odes of Keats
Through all the great odes of Keats is heard a note of solemnity, deepening now and then
to poignant suffering. Through all runs also the same haunting sense of unreality. Indolence is
better than ambition. The nightingale’s song is an illusion, and an illusion which soon fails, leaving
the listener alone with his cares and griefs. The world’s truest sadness dwells with beauty and joy,
for the pain of suffering is less keen than the pain of knowing that beauty and joy will fade. There
is no refuge but in art, the serene, but immortal, and unchangeable: the temple of thought which
the poet builds for himself in the Ode to Psyche, the marble world which lives for ever on the
carved shape of a Grecian urn.
An Atmosphere of Sadness
This spirit of sadness is not the whole philosophy of Keats, but it is the side of his thought
that predominates in the last year of his life: it strikes the keynote of the Odes.
H.W. Garrod on the Construction of Keats’s Odes
H.W. Garrod says, “Reckoning To Autumn with the odes, we have in that volume (of
1820), five odes in all, each exhibiting connections of metre and manner which deserve
study…..We may swell the list of odes, if we care to do so, by including the posthumously

55
published Ode to Fanny; and we must certainly include the Ode on Indolence. The Ode on
Indolence has close affinities with the five great odes of the 1820 volume. Robert Bridges seems
doubtful whether to rank it above or below the Grecian Urn. That is to depreciate the Urn,
paradoxically, and to elevate Indolence above its merit. Yet its merit is sufficient to entitle it to be
considered with the other five odes.”
“Ode to Psyche”, the Earliest of the Great Odes
Of these the earliest, it is now generally supposed, is the Ode To Psyche. The circumstances
in which it was written reveal to us more clearly than anything else Keats’s technique of
composition.
The Ode, Developed from the Sonnet-Form
The ode, as the six great odes illustrate it, develops with Keats, not from the ode or hymn
of the eighteenth century, but from a species which the eighteenth century despised, the sonnet.
The earlier odes look back, certainly, to that century—directly to that century, and indirectly to
the Pindarics of Cowley. With the irregular ode, again, as it had been practised by Wordsworth
and Coleridge Keats was familiar; and the influence of it may be discerned in some of the
characters of the Ode to Psyche. That ode, however, is before all else interesting as marking
decisively the transition to a type of quite different construction, a type built upon the sonnet.
An Analysis of the Structure of Keats’s Odes
Until the end of 1817, Keats composed sonnets upon the Petrarchian pattern exclusively—
in obvious dependence on Milton and Wordsworth. In the last days of January, 1818, he for the
first time essayed a sonnet on the English, or Shakespearean pattern; and followed it up in
February by five others on a like model;, returning to the Petrarchian pattern thereafter only
thrice. It was in May of this year that he began the unfinished Ode to Maia—which in its imperfect
form has so much of the perfection of a Shakespearean sonnet. Of Keats’s Shakespearean sonnets
all, save three, pursue the normal pattern—the pattern invented by Surrey, adopted by Spenser
(1591), and by Watson (1593), and followed by Drayton, Daniel, and Shakespeare, but never used
by Milton or Wordsworth; the pattern of which the formula is abab cdcd efefgg. The three
divergences from this pattern all occur in a letter dated April 30, 1819; and the same letter
contains the Ode to Psyche…..“I have been endeavouring”, Keats writes, “to discover a better
sonnet stanza than we have. The legitimate (that is, the Petrarchian) does not-suit the language
over well from the pouncing rhymes; the other kind appears too elegiac, and the couplet at the
end of it seldom has a pleasing effect.” He propounds, accordingly, the rhyme-schemeabc abd cab
cde de. In all three experiments, he has two objects; he desires (1) to get rid of the end couplet,
which not even Shakespeare manages effectively; (2) to free the sonnet from the semblance of
three alternate-rhyming quatrains followed by such a couplet—the alternate-rhyming quatrains
are the source of the too elegiac character which he finds in the Shakespearean sonnet. ‘I do not
pretend to have succeeded’, Keats writes of his experiments; and he seems, in fact, to have ceased
the composition of sonnets from about this time. In any case, the month that followed, May, is the
month of the great odes, and the letter containing these experiments in the sonneteering contains
also the first draft of the Ode to Psyche. That ode, as the letter gives it, is divided into two stanzas,
the first of 35, the second of 32 lines. The thirty-five lines of the first stanza should have been
thirty-six; by an inadvertence a line is missing after line 16. The two stanzas of the letter are, in
the edition of 1820, resolved into four. The first stanza becomes two stanzas of twenty-four lines
and twelve lines respectively, the second two stanzas of 14 and 18 lines respectively. Of each

56
stanza, the first eight lines are the octave of a Shakespearean sonnet, abab cdcd (save that the
third stanza offers the variant abab cddc, and that the second reduces the number of feet in its
sixth and eighth lines to three). Of the,1 first stanza, lines 1-14 make a Shakespearean sonnet,
varying only in that the sestet takes the pattern, effe ef (that is to say, the octave is Shakespearean,
the sestet Petrarchian), and that the twelfth line is reduced to three feet. The second stanza, save
for the reduction of feet noted, is a normal Shakespearean sonnet, less the end-couplet. The first
14 lines of the fourth stanza, again, make a normal Shakespearean sonnet, save that the end-
couplet follows the octave instead of following the sestet, Even so much suffices to show how this
ode is in fact built up out of the sonnet.
The “Ode to Psyche”
The Ode To Psyche stands apart from the other odes by its much greater metrical variety.
Its stanzas are longer than those of any other. The line-lengths are diversified: of no two stanzas
is the scheme identical, and there is, in general, an approximation to the lyricism of the eighteenth
century Pindarics. Only in one other ode of the great six do we find any variation in line-length—
the Ode To a Nightingale.
The “Ode to a Nightingale”
The metrical pattern of that ode (To a Nightingale), if we disregard the isolated variation
in the eighth line which is reduced to three feet, is the pattern of all the others (save that To
Autumn). Each of them is built of stanzas of ten lines. These 10-line stanzas are in fact a kind of
mutilated sonnet. Keats’s trouble with the Petrarchian sonnet was the trouble of the ‘pouncing
rhymes’; a trouble that resides in the octave. His trouble with the Shakespearean sonnet was two-
fold; its over-elegiac character, and the end-couplet. The odes subsequent to Psyche offer his
solution of these troubles. Each stanza of each of them, save Autumn, consists of the first half of
the octave of a Shakespearean sonnet (that is to say, one elegiac quatrain, instead of two), followed
by a Petrarchian sestet. Of the Nightingale, Melancholy, andIndolence, the scheme is abab cde
cde; that of the Grecian Urn differs only by substituting, in the sestet, cde dee.
The “Ode to Autumn”
The Ode To Autumn, the latest of the six great odes, differs from all of them in employing
a stanza of eleven lines. The pattern, through the first seven lines, is that of the others: abab
cde; then follows, in the first stanza dcce, in the other two stanzascdde. The variation between the
first stanza and the other two is probably due to mere inattention; the scheme designed being that
of the other odes with the second line of the ‘sestet’ answered by two rhymes, a couplet, instead of
by a single rhyme. Out of the sonnet, Keats builds in the odes, a stanza of which the repetition
furnishes a metrical system more perfectly adjusted than any other in English poetry to elegiac
reflection.
H.W. Garrod on the Themes of Keats’s Great Odes
There are close connections of thought between all of the six great odes with the exception
of To Autumn (which was written towards the end of September, 1819). Just as each of these odes
is something in the nature of a sonnet-sequence, so the odes, taken together, are a sequence; an
ode-sequence of which the relations, not of time, but of mood, to some extent disclose
themselves. Psyche was the first in time of these odes, and in mood also it begins them.
Keats has thrown a very individual sentiment about the legend of Psyche. The appeal of
Psyche to him is not more her loveliness than her lateness. Of the faded Olympian hierarchy she

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was the latest-born; of divinities that have all passed into unreality, the least real, the most a
“vision”. Too late for antique vows, for a poetry of faith, for the believing lyre,—her fascination for
Keats is that he himself creates her. Not any substance in the deity herself, but his own eyes, supply
his inspiration:
I see and sing, by my own eyes inspired.
To this deity, the poet promises a worship, melancholy and languorous enough. Keats will be the
priest of Psyche, priest and choir and shrine and grove; she shall have a fane “in some untrodden
region of the mind”, and shall enjoy:
all soft delight
That shadowy thought can win.
There shall be a bright torch burning for her, and the casement shall be open to let her in at night.
The open window and the lighted torch are to admit and attract a timorous moth-goddess, who
symbolises melancholic love. Keats has in fact identified the Psyche who is the soul (love’s soul)
with the Psyche which means moth.
It is a strange goddess whom he has thus brought from her native unrealities into the
reality of the imagination. But her identity is certain—we meet her again, brought into darker
shadow, in the Ode on Melancholy. The last stanza of Psyche—the moth stanza—should be read
in close connection with the first stanza of this later ode.
There is a deeper melancholy than melancholy itself. Lethe and wolf’s-bane, and the
deadly night-shade and the yew-berry—emblems of sadness obtained from the world of flowers—
are emblems only meagre and inadequate. In the world of living creatures; the beetle, the owl, the
moth, fall short of that for which we invoke their symbolism:
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow’s mysteries.
There is the same identification here of Psyche and the moth. This moth-godoess, this mournful
Psyche, who typifies melancholic love, is no partner in the mysteries of that deeper and truer
melancholy which the ode celebrates. It is the paradox of this deeper melancholy that she dwells
with beauty, that she has her sovereign shrine in the very temple ofDelight. The strenuous tongue
of the poet, his courage of eloquence, alone can burst joy’s grape, and taste the heart of
melancholy. Keats means to say not merely that the poet has a more delicate perception than
common men of the beauty of the world of sense: and not merely that this delicate perception is
intensified in him by the awareness that the perfections of sense are born and perish in the same
moment; not merely that; but that the top of poetry, its supreme mood, is precisely that mood in
which beauty is so apprehended that the awareness of it is anguish—a “wakeful anguish”, in
comparison with which all other dark effects come together as “shade to shade”, “drowsily” and
listlessly, mere melancholic fits of love-sick or repining men.
“Too drowsily”, Keats likes the word and the idea. The idea pervades the Psyche ode. Upon
the word, the Ode to a Nightingale opens:
My heart aches, and a drowsy, numbness pains
My sense.
It is used twice in the Ode on Indolence:

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(i) Ripe was the drowsy hour:

(ii) For Poesy!—no, she has not a joy,
At least for me, so sweet as drowsy noons,
And evenings steeped in honied indolence.
The mood of this drowsy indolence Keats calls “my 1819 mood”. From it spring not only all the
great odes, save Autumn, but The Eve of St. Agnes. The truth is that the drowsiness and indolence
of Keats is the poetry of other men; indeed, the poetry of Keats himself, but that he will never be
content in it. In the Ode on Melancholy, he conceives it as a kind of duty for the poet to keep alive
in himself the anguished appreciation of beauty. If that “wakeful anguish” be drowned, his insight
perishes.
Out of the luxury of sensation, which is his true effectiveness, Keats is for ever scheming
himself into some unhappiness; now he runs from sense to thought, to metaphysical reflection,
now from mere poetry to a poetry of social suffering; and yet again here, he is not happy till he
can discover in the joy of the senses themselves not happiness merely but some immortal anguish.
If he cannot flee from the pure enjoyment of the beautiful, he can yet perish in it.
An Analysis of the “Ode to a Grecian Urn”
The Grecian Urn we may suppose to have been written in a mood of strong revulsion from
thesis of Melancholy. It presents, in fact, the same world, the world of beauty and human passion,
only fixed by art. The lover whom the urn figures loves, not a beauty that must die, but that which,
from the nature of art, “cannot fade”. The songs that he sings, he sings “not to the sensual ear”,
but “to the spirit”.
The first four stanzas of this ode achieve a faultless harmonising of sentiment, thought and
language. But the last stanza is neither worthy of the rest, nor, consistent with it. The theme of
what has gone before is the arrest of beauty, the fixity given by art to forms which in life are fluid
and impermanent, and the appeal of art from the senses to the spirit. The theme of the final stanza
is the relation of beauty to truth, to thought. Nothing has prepared the transition to this. Besides,
the figures of the urn become suddenly “cold Pastoral”, in comparison with the worm human
world of actual life. The first half of this stanza seriously mars the effect of all that has preceded;
the second half of the stanza seeks to allay the doubt set up; to allay it by the thesis that there is
nothing real but the beautiful, and nothing beautiful but the real. The last stanza does not, either
in thought or feeling, hang true with the rest of the ode. Down to the end of the fourth stanza there
is a perfect development of the governing idea—the supremacy of ideal art over nature, because
of its unchanging expression of perfection. Perhaps the fourth stanza is more beautiful than any
of the others—and more true. The trouble is that it is little too true. In the last lines of the fourth
stanza, especially the last three lines where the poet speaks of the permanent silence and
desolation of the little town, there is an undertone of sadness, of disappointment. This pure and
cold art makes, in fact, a less appeal to Keats than the ode as a whole would pretend.
The lines in this ode which speak of art as teasing us out of thought echo some lines of
the Epistle To Reynolds:
Things cannot to the will
Be settled, but they tease us out of thought…….
It is a flaw
In happiness, to see beyond our bourn;

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It forces us in summer skies to mourn,

It spoils the singing of the nightingale.
The lines were a year old and more, when Keats wrote the Grecian Urn and the Ode to a
Nightingale. The latter poem is written in the spirit of these lines. Into the Grecian Urn,that spirit
has somewhat inappropriately intruded itself. There is that much connection between the two
odes.
The Connection Between Two of the Odes
Between the Nightingale Ode and Melancholy, there is a closer connection. In the Ode on
Melancholy, whatever is beautiful in the world is spoilt by something in the nature of our
apprehension of it. In the Nightingale Ode, the singing of the nightingale is spoilt, not by any
anguish which there is in its joy, but, as in the lines to Reynolds, by the intrusion of a human
trouble. In the lines to Reynolds, it is the trouble of abstract thought; in the Ode to a Nightingale it
is the trouble of suffering humanity.
It is interesting to observe in the Ode to a Nightingale the subtle shading off of mood into
mood as the ode develops itself stanza by stanza.
In the case of this ode, again, the close is not wholly worthy of the rest, As in theGrecian
Urn, here also the last stanza seems to lose hold of the main idea, and to suffer at the same time
a deterioration of rhythmical effect.
The View of Robert Bridges About the “Ode to Autumn”
As for the Ode to Autumn, the judgment of Robert Bridges is very sound: “I do not know
that any sort of fault can be found in it. But though this the best as a whole, it is yet left far behind
by the splendour of the Nightingale, in which the mood is more intense, and the poetry vies in
richness and variety with the subject”.
Keats' ODE ON A GRECIAN URN

1. INTRODUCTION
Keats’s Love of Greek Art
The ancient Greeks used to cremate a dead human being and to deposit the ashes in an
urn which was then buried. An urn was a kind of vase generally made of marble or of brass. Often,
different kinds of scenes and situations were carved on the outer surface of an urn.
An urn, therefore, apart from serving as a repository of the ashes of the dead, was also a work of
art. The present poem was partly inspired by a marble Grecian urn which was in the possession
of Lord Holland on which was carved a scene of pastoral sacrifice such as the one that is
described in the fourth stanza. A Bacchanalian procession was also sometimes carved on a
Grecian urn. It seems almost certain that Keats was not merely thinking of the particular urn in
the possession of Lord Holland, but also of Greek sculpture in general as represented by the
famous Elgin marbles which he had seen in the British museum. Keats had a natural affinity
with the Greek mind and this poem shows his love of Greek art.

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2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Various Scenes Depicted on the Urn
Keats addresses the Grecian urn as an “unravished bride of quietness and a foster-child of
silence and slow time”. Thus Keats conveys to us the idea of the silent repose and the great age of
this piece of Greek sculpture. He also calls the Grecian urn a “Sylvan historian” because of the
rural and forest scenes carved on its surface. In a series of questions, which are also vivid pictures,
he gives us an idea of what those carvings represent. He refers to the human beings and the gods
depicted on the urn in the beautiful valleys of Tempe and Arcadia. He refers to the men in a
passionate mood chasing maidens who are struggling to escape from their clutches. Then there
are the flute-players playing wild and ecstatic music.
Art is Superior to Life
The poet goes on to say that music which is imagined is much sweeter than music which
is actually heard. The music of the flute-players depicted on the Grecian urn cannot be actually
heard by us: we must imagine what tunes they are playing. These unheard, but imaginable
melodies are sweeter than the songs that we actually hear. Besides, the lover who is trying to kiss
his beloved on the urn will always be seen in the same mood of pleasurable anticipation. In real
life, love and beauty decline and fade; but the love and beauty depicted on the urn will remain
ever fresh. In real life, spring is short, and the trees must shed their leaves. Similarly, in real life a
musician will at least feel tired of playing his music and will stop. The enjoyment of the pleasures
of love in real life is followed by disgust and satiety. But the trees depicted on the urn will never
shed their leaves; the melodist will for ever play his tunes, and the heart of the lover will always
throb with passion while the beauty of the beloved will never fade. In this way, the poet wishes to
convey the idea that art is, in one sense, superior to real life.
The Town Emptied of its Folk
Then follows a picture of a crowd of people going to some place of worship. A priest leads
a heifer which has been decorated with garlands and which is to be offered as a sacrifice. The
worshippers have come from some little town situated close to a river or on a sea-shore or at the
foot of a hill on which stands a fortress. The town which has been emptied of its people, will always
remain desolate, because the people shown on the urn will always be seen going away to the place
of worship but never returning to the town.
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty
The poet then addresses the urn as “Attic shape”, “Fair altitude”, and “Cold pastoral”.
These expressions convey the beauty and the poise of the urn and refer also to the rural scenes
depicted on it. The feelings which the urn awakens in the poet are like the overwhelming feeling
which arise when the poet thinks of eternity. The urn, says Keats, will always be a friend to man.
The generations of men will come and pass, and will perhaps undergo sufferings and sorrows of
which we have no notion at present. But the urn will have a valuable message for those
generations, the message, namely, that, Beauty and Truth are not separate things but two sides of
one and the same thing. (Or, Beauty and Truth are not two things, not even twin things, but one
and the same thing seen from different aspects.) The knowledge of this great fact is of supreme
importance and this fact represents the very essence of wisdom. Having this knowledge, mankind
needs no other knowledge.

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3. CRITICAL APPRECIATION
Inspired by Greek Sculpture
This poem was inspired by a collection of Greek sculpture which Keats saw in the British
museum. Partly, perhaps, the inspiration for the poem was derived from a marble urn which
belonged to Lord Holland. In giving us the imagery of the carvings on the urn, Keats was not
thinking of a single urn but of Greek sculpture in general. Keats had a native sympathy for, and a
natural affinity with, the Greek mind. This ode shows the full force of Hellenic influence acting on
a temperament essentially romantic.
Concrete and Sensuous Imagery
A striking quality of Keats’s entire poetry is fully revealed in this ode. Keats had a genius
for drawing vivid and concrete pictures mostly with a sensuous appeal. The whole of this poem is
a series of such pictures— passionate men and gods chasing reluctant maidens, the flute-players
playing their ecstatic music, the fair youth trying to kiss his beloved, the happy branches of the
trees, the worshippers going to a place of worship in order to offer a sacrifice with a mysterious
priest to lead them, a little town which will always remain desolate—these are pictures which
Keats vividly brings before our minds. The passion of men and gods, and the reluctance of
maidens to be caught or seized is beautifully depicted in the following two lines:
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
Here is the picture of a bold lover trying to get a kiss which will never materialise:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—
The ecstasy of the passion of youthful love is depicted in the following lines:
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d
For ever panting and for ever young.
The Superiority of Art Over Life
An important idea in this ode is that, art is superior to real life in certain respects. The
trees depicted on the urn will always enjoy spring. The flute-players shown on the urn will never
tire of playing tunes which are ever new. The passion of the lovers depicted on the urn will never
decline, and the beauty of the beloved will never fade. Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard
are sweeter. The music of the flute-players depicted on the urn has a sweetness which music in
real life can never possess.
Sidney Colvin’s Comment
“The second and third stanzas express with perfect poetic felicity and insight the vital
differences between life, which pays for its unique prerogative of reality by satiety and decay, and
art, which in forfeiting reality gains in exchange permanence of beauty, and the power to charm
by imagined experience even richer than the real.”(Sidney Colvin)

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Sidney Colvin perceives a dissonance between the idea of the second and the third stanzas
and that of the fourth. The fourth stanza, this critic points out, speaks of the arrest of life as though
it were an infliction in the sphere of reality, and not merely, like the examples of such arrest given
in the preceding stanzas, a necessary condition in the sphere of art, having in that sphere its own
compensations. But Sidney Colvin would like the reader to reconcile himself to this dissonance.
Beauty and Truth
The central thought of this ode is the unity of Truth and Beauty. Beauty and Truth, says
Keats, are not two separate things. They are one and the same thing seen from two different
aspects. What is beautiful must be true, and what is true must be beautiful. There can be no
question of Beauty being separated from Truth. Every piece of art which is based on truth or reality
must be beautiful; and every beautiful work of art must have a hard core of truth in it. Thus Keats
seems to reject the school of gross realism in art on one side, and the school of ornament for
ornament’s sake on the other. Keats may have no right to frame a law for the artist, but the idea
contained in the final stanza of the poem may justly be regarded as his main contribution to
speculative thought.
Mingling of Intellectual and Emotional Elements
This ode represents the maturity and the height of Keats’s poetic power. His poetry is
essentially imaginative and emotional, but his greatest poems possess also an intellectual appeal.
This ode, for instance, represents an exquisite fusion of the imaginative, emotional, and
intellectual elements. The moral of the urn, namely, that Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty, has
an intellectual basis. But, apart from this, the poem is charged with emotion and shows rich
imagination. The first three stanzas, especially, have a passionate quality about them. Lines
already quoted above in a different context amply show that.
Technical Merits
This ode is written in a regular stanza of ten lines, consisting of a quatrain and a sestet.
Thus it does not follow the pattern of the long unequal stanzas of the Ode To Psyche. Like most of
his other poems, this ode shows Keats’s genius for coining original, striking, and appropriate
phrases. “Sylvan historian”, “leaf-fringed legend”, “a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d”, “Cold
pastoral”, and “Fair attitude” are some of the examples: while the statement “Beauty is Truth,
Truth Beauty”, is a neat and compact expression of a profound fact, an expression which is one of
the most often quoted from English poetry.
H.W. Garrod on the Theme of This Ode
H.W. Garrod writes: “The theme of what has gone before (in the first four stanzas) is the
arrest of beauty, the fixity given by art to forms which in life are fluid and impermanent, and the
appeal of art from the senses to the spirit. The theme of the final stanza is the relation of beauty
to truth or to thought. Nothing has prepared the transition to this…..The figures of the urn become
for Keats, suddenly, a “Cold Pastoral”—cold, the character of everything that is enduring…..The
second half of the stanza—of which the first, marring seriously, as I think, the effect of all that has
preceded, has called in question the appeal of art…..Down to the end of the fourth stanza there is
a very perfect development of the governing idea—the supremacy of ideal art over Nature, because
of its unchanging expression of perfection. Perhaps the fourth stanza is more beautiful than any
of the others—and more true. The trouble is that it is a little too true. Truth to his own main theme
has taken Keats rather farther than he meant to go…..This pure cold art makes, in fact, a less

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appeal to Keats than the ode as a whole pretends; and when, in the lines that follow these lines,
he indulges the jarring apostrophe ‘Cold Pastoral’, he has said more than he meant or wished to
mean.”
(Among other critics who have found fault with the last stanza are T.S. Eliot and Allen
Tate.)
Another Critic’s View
According to another critic (Robin Mayhead), the Ode on a Grecian Urn seems to
disparage sexual love, even though it sees to establish a balance between art and life. The poet
seems to imply that if only love could stop constantly at the stage of mere desire all would be well.
Although the poem admits the claims of a warm-blooded life, it seems to convey the feeling that
sexual love is something of a disaster. (The Ode To Psyche presents an altogether different view.)
The Urn as a Symbol
In the Grecian urn, Keats find a more satisfying symbol of permanence than the song of
the nightingale. But the deficiencies that the poem implies in the value of art wee ken its power as
a symbol, because one would certainly prefer the warm Impermanence of human life to the cold
permanence of the urn.
Charles Patterson on the Ode on a Grecian Urn
According to Charles Patterson, the Ode on a Grecian Urn gives as much importance to
passion as to the idea of permanence. This ode should not be regarded as a lyric of escape and
should not be taken to represent Keats as a young man unwilling to face life as it is. The duality of
the theme of this ode is indicated in the very opening stanza where we find a clue to Keats’s real
attitude toward the permanence of the urn and the supremacy of art. In this opening stanza Keats
gives us a contrast between something unchanging (the urn) because it is dead and something
transient because it is alive. This equipoise is continued in the second stanza, but the poet
continues to toy with his dual matter, without asserting or implying that lasting permanence is
superior to transient passion. Nor does he indicate any preference in the third stanza, though the
emphasis here, as in the second stanza, is upon the warmth and the turbulence of life. We have
not been made to feel that Keats has any distinct preference for an unrealised but permanent love
over an actually experienced and vital passion. In the fourth stanza we are carried into a world
(the little town) that is permanent, but permanently empty, just as the figures on the urn are
permanent but permanently lifeless. In the final stanza the poet ends his dual game. Here he
emphatically addresses this thing of beauty as just what it is, a Grecian urn. This work of art, he
says, has teased us out of thought, that is out of the world of actual into an ideal world in which
we can momentarily and imaginatively enjoy the life that is free from the particular imperfections
of our lot here. But this ideal world is not free of all imperfection; it has very grave deficiencies,
for it is lifeless, motionless, cold, unreal. The brief journey into fairyland is over, and Keats
unmistakably means it to be over.
The Duality of the Theme of the Poem
Keeping in mind the duality of his theme in the poem, it is clear that Keats deals with two
kinds of experience: (1) human life in actuality, and (2) the appreciation of an imaginary
representation of several human activities (love, music, community life, and religious ritual). The
two kinds of experience are related. Art alone can never satisfy us completely (because the urn is

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a cold pastoral); it is only an imitation of reality. But this work of art can tell us something
important about the real or actual experience, the love passion that is so fleeting and transient.
That is, the essence of physical love is participation in the life-force and the continuing life
process; only the individual instance is transient and short-lived. “Beauty is Truth”, then, means
that beauty is total reality properly understood; that is, beauty is the true significance of things in
our world and in the ideal one.
The Significance of the Identification of Beauty and Truth
The line “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty” has troubled almost all critics who have dealt
with this ode. T.S. Eliot looks upon this line as a serious flaw in a beautiful poem. Middleton Murry
calls this line a troubling assertion which is an intrusion upon the poem, which does not grow out
of the poem, and which is not dramatically accommodated to it. Such is essentially Garrod’s
objection also.
As Cleanth Brooks observes: “It is possible to emphasise the first part (“Beauty is Truth”)
and reach the conclusion that Keats is a pure aesthete, upholding art for art’s sake. But it is also
possible to emphasise the second part (“Truth is Beauty”), and argue with the Marxist critics that
Keats upholds art as a medium of propaganda.
Cleanth Brooks on the Ode on a Grecian Urn
The First Stanza
This critic makes a rapid survey of the Ode on a Grecian Urn to show that the last lines of
the poem (which seem to strike a discordant note in the eyes of some other critics) have
dramatically been prepared for. In the first stanza, Keats emphasises the silence of the urn—a
“bride of quietness”, and a “foster-child of Silence”. But the urn is a historian too, a rural historian.
This historian supplies no names and dates, and it gives the .actions of men or gods, of god-like
men or of superhuman gods. The action is intense even though the urn is cold marble. The scene
is one of violent love-making, but the urn itself is like an “unravished bride” or like a child of
Silence. The paradox is to be noted.
The Second Stanza
The second stanza begins rather with a bold paradox which runs through the stanza: action
goes on though the actors are motionless; the song will not cease; the maiden, always to be kissed
but never actually kissed will remain changelessly beautiful. The poet is obviously emphasising
the ever-fresh charm of the scene which can defy time and is deathless. The beauty portrayed is
deathless because it is lifeless.
The Third Stanza
The third stanza repeats some of the earlier ideas. The trees cannot shed their leaves; the
untiring melodist and the ever-passionate lover reappear. There is a tendency to linger over the
scene sentimentally. Whatever development there is in the stanza depends on the increased stress
on the paradoxical element. The musician plays sweeter music because he is unheard, but it is
implied that he does not tire of the song for the same reason that the lover does not tire of his love:
neither song nor love here can find fulfilment. The songs are “for ever new” because they cannot
be completed. The paradox is carried further in the case of the lover whose love is for ever warm
because it is still to be enjoyed. The love depicted on the urn remains warm and young because it
is not human flesh at all but cold ancient marble.

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The Fourth Stanza

The fourth stanza emphasises, not individual aspiration and desire, but communal life. It
constitutes another chapter in the history that the “Sylvan historian” has to tell. The lines which
the poet speculates on the strange emptiness of the little town are among the most moving in this
poem. “If the earlier stanzas have been concerned with such paradoxes as the ability of static
carving to convey dynamic action, of the soundless pipes to play music sweeter than that of the
heard melodies, of the figured lover to have a more warm and panting love than that of breathing
flesh and blood, so in the same way the town implied by the urn comes to have a richer and more
important history than that of actual cities.”
The Fifth Stanza
In the fifth stanza we move out of the enchanted world depicted on the urn to consider the
urn itself as an object, an “Attic shape” and a “Cold Pastoral”. The urn itself is a “silent form”, and
it speaks, not by means of statement, but by teasing us out of thought. It is as enigmatic and
bewildering as eternity is. The marble men and maidens of the urn will not grow old as real men
and women will, and the “Sylvan historian” will recite its history to other generations. What will
it say to them? The urn is beautiful and yet its beauty is based on an imaginative perception of
essentials. Such a vision is beautiful but it is also true. The “Sylvan historian” presents us with
beautiful histories, but they are true histories, and it is a good historian. Moreover, the truth which
the “Sylvan historian” gives is the only kind of truth which we are likely to get on this earth, and
it is the only kind that we need to have. The “Sylvan historian” so orders the selected facts that we
have not only beauty but insight into essential truth.
Keats' ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

1. INTRODUCTION
The Genesis of This Ode
In the early months of 1819, Keats was living with his friend Brown at Wentworth Place,
Hampstead. In April a nightingale built her nest in the garden. Keats felt a tranquil and continual
joy in its song, and one morning, sitting in a chair on the grass-plot under a plum-tree, he
composed a poem containing his poetic feelings about the song of the nightingale. This was
his Ode to a Nightingale which was first printed in July, 1819. Subsequently it formed part of the
volume which appeared in 1820 entitled Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems.
The Same Train of Thought in Four of the Odes

Four of Keats’s odes, the Ode to a Nightingale, the Ode on a Grecian Urn, theOde on
Melancholy, and To Autumn should be studied together. They were all written in 1819 and the
same train of thought runs through them all. One can even say that these four odes sum up Keats’s
philosophy.

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The Most Passionately Human and Personal of the Odes

“The first-written of the four, the Ode to a Nightingale, is the most passionately human
and personal of them all”. It was written soon after the death of Keats’s brother Tom, to whom he
had been deeply attached and whom he nursed to the end. Keats was feeling keenly the tragedy of
a world in which a young man grows pale, becomes a skeleton, and meets his end prematurely
(“Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”). The song of the nightingale aroused in
him a longing to escape with it from this world of sorrows to the world of ideal beauty. The song
of the nightingale somehow symbolised to him a world of ideal beauty. “He did not think of a
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 of disillusionment.”
A Key Contrast in the Poem
The poem contrasts the immortality of the nightingale (as symbolised by its song) with the
mortality of human beings. It also contrasts the happiness and joy of the bird with the sufferings,
sorrows and afflictions of the human world where youth, beauty and love are all short-lived.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
Stanza 1
The Benumbing Effect of the Nightingale’s Song
The poet’s heart aches and his body is benumbed as he hears the song of a nightingale. He
feels like one who has taken a benumbing poison or a dulling drug. This effect is produced on him
by the happy song of the nightingale who is singing in a joyous, glorious voice among the green
beech-trees; and who is called by the poet a light-winged nymph of the trees.
The Effect of Languor Heightened by the Very Movement of the Verse
It is to be noted that the poet lapses away into a kind of swoon on hearing the ecstatic song
of the nightingale and he seeks oblivion. The following words in this stanza produce a cumulative
effect of drugged languor: “aches”, “drowsy numbness”, “pains”, “dull opiate”, “Lethe-wards had
sunk”. The very movement of the verse here contributes to the total effect of languor that is
produced.
The Excess of Happiness
It is an excess of happiness, occasioned by the bird’s song, that produces the mood of
languor in the poet. However, the narcotic effect is to some extent relieved by a feeling of renewed
life that is produced by a reference to the “light-winged Dryad of trees”, “the melodious plot of
beechen green”, and “summer”.
Stanza 2
The Poet’s Desire For Some Marvellous Wine
The poet craves for a drink of some marvellous wine brewed in the warm, gay and mirthful
regions of France, or a large cup of red wine fetched from the fountain of the Muses. He wants

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this wine to enable him to leave this world of reality and to escape into the forest where he can
join the nightingale.
An Atmosphere of Warmth in this Stanza
The nightingale and its songs have given way, in this stanza, to other thoughts—thoughts
of wine, the colourful lands in which its grapes are grown, and the gaiety which it brings, A general
atmosphere of warmth predominates in this stanza. “Sun-burnt mirth” combines the idea of the
sun’s warmth with the warmth of joy in the merry-makers. This is a richly sensuous stanza with
its references to gaiety and merrymaking, the cool wine, the dancing, the blushful wine with its
bubbles winking at the brim. The poet’s desire for wine does not mean a desire for warmth and
gaiety; it is a desire for escape from the world of realities.
Stanza 3
The Sorrows in Human Life
The poet wishes to forget himself and escape from this world of perplexity and sorrow into
the forest to be in the company of the nightingale. Life, he says, offers a depressing spectacle with
its weariness, fever, and fret. This is a world in which people hear, each other’s groans, a world in
which palsy may attack the old and consumption may attack the young, in which merely to think
is to become sad, and in which both beauty and love are short-lived.
Most Pessimistic Lines
Here we have some of the most pessimistic lines in English poetry. Of course the picture
of life depicted here is one-sided, but it is nonetheless realistic and convincing. It cannot be
doubted that the amount of suffering in this world is far greater than the amount of happiness.
Apart from that, these lines echo the poet’s personal grief caused by the premature death of his
brother Tom. Although these lines are prompted chiefly by personal grief, yet their universal
character has to be recognised.
The Nightingale’s Happiness
The Nightingale is believed by the poet to be happy because it is not human, because it has
never known the weariness, the fever and fret of human existence. “And the poet knows too well
that the happiness is mentally following the bird into its world among the leaves cannot last, for
he is a human being after all, and what is human must pass away. His depression is thus implicit
in the happiness itself.”
Stanza 4
The Poet’s Use of His Imagination to Escape from Life •
Dismissing the idea of wine, the poet decides to fly into the forest on the wings of his poetic
imagination. He rejects Bacchus and seeks the help of Poesy. The next moment he feels
transported into the forest. The moon is shining, surrounded by the stars, but the forest is dark
because very little light can penetrate the thickly-growing leaves of trees.
The Beauty of Nature
After having given expression to thoughts of human sorrow in the third stanza, the poet
here makes a vigorous effort to get back into a happy mood. Gloomy thoughts about the human

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lot are now brushed aside, together with the possibility of wine. Seeking refuge in poetic fancy, he
draws pleasure from the glory of Nature. However, the picture of Nature in the second half of the
stanza has been criticised as being “affected” because of the reference to the “Queen-Moon”, and
the idea of the stars as fairies. “Keats is being self-consciously poetical in the bad sense, as though
he had gone back to the ‘pretty’ manner ofEndymion. It is not accidental that he has used the
rather affected word “Poesy” here. The lines are exceedingly charming, and when we have said
that, we have made a point against them. This kind of charm is not what we have come to accept
from the mature Keats.”-—(Robin Mayhead)
Stanza 5
The Flowers in the Forest
The poet cannot see what flowers grow at his feet in the forest and what blossoms are on
the fruit trees. However, by the scents that fill the dark air, he can guess that the forest is full of
white hawthorns, sweet-briers, violets, and buds of musk-roses which will in due course attract
multitudes of flies on summer evenings.
A Richly Sensuous Stanza
This is again a richly sensuous stanza. The poet makes a delighted response to the
sensuous beauty of the world of Nature.
Stanza 6
The Poet’s Desire for Death
As he hears the nightingale’s song in the darkness, he remembers how on many occasions
in his life he has wished for death that would bring a release from the burden of existence. More
than ever before, he now feels a desire to die, though he would like to die a painless death: “To
cease upon themidnight with no pain.” The nightingale will continue to pour forth its ecstatic
melody even when he is dead and become completely deaf to it.
A Morbid Mood
The mood of the poet has again changed. He started the poem in a mood of ecstasy which
changed, into a mood of extreme sorrow in the third stanza. In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he
changed back into a joyous mood. Now he expresses a wish to die. In this stanza he is therefore in
a most morbid mood. The desire for death is obviously an unhealthy one and, though the reader
may have been sharing the preceding moods of the poet, he may not be able to share this desire
for death.
Stanza 7
The Mortality of Human Beings Versus the Nightingale’s Immortality
The poet now contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the
nightingale. The nightingale’s song, he argues, has not changed for centuries. The voice of the
nightingale which he now hears is perhaps the same as was heard in ancient times by emperor
and clown, the same as was heard by the miserable Ruth as she stood in the alien corn. It is the
same voice which has often cast a spell upon the enchanted windows of a castle situated on the
shore of a dangerous ocean in “fairy lands forlorn”.

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Illogical Reasoning in this Stanza

There is something illogical about the poet’s attributing immortality to the nightingale but,
of course, he is referring to the continuity of the bird’s song which has remained unchanged
through the centuries. He certainly does not mean that the bird is literally immortal. He only takes
the nightingale’s song as a symbol of permanence. Generations pass, yet the song of the
nightingale continues from age to age. In the Ode On Melancholy, Keats accepts impermanence
as inevitable, but here he dwells upon the idea of permanence.
The Famous Closing Lines of this Stanza
The last two lines of the stanza have become famous for the sense of wonder and mystery
which they arouse. It is said that in these two lines Keats has touched the high watermark of
romanticism.
Stanza 8
The Poet’s Disillusionment
The word “forlorn” acts on the poet’s mind like the ringing of an alarm bell and reminds
him of his own forlorn condition. As the song of the nightingale becomes more distant, his
imagination which had carried him into the forest also decline, and the poetic vision fades. He
knows that he is moving back from the region of poetic fancy to the common world of reality. After
all, “the fancy cannot cheat so well as she is famed to do.”
The Note of Frustration in the Final Stanza
In the concluding stanza, the poet introduces two new ideas. One is that even the song of
the nightingale cannot be heard constantly and that it must fade away before long. Secondly, the
poetic imagination itself has only brief flights and that, at the end of a poetic flight to beautiful
regions, one must return to the painful realities of life-. Thus the ode, which had opened on a note
of ecstasy, ends on a note of frustration.
3. A NOTE ON THE POET’S MOOD IN THEODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
Joy and Ecstasy in the Opening Two Stanzas
The poet’s mood in the two opening stanzas is one of joy and ecstasy which almost
benumbs his senses. This mood is due to the rapturous song of the nightingale. This mood leads
him to a desire for a beaker of wine by drinking which he can forget this world or sorrows and
misfortunes and fade away into the forest where the nightingale is singing its joyous song.
The Sense of the Tragedy of Human Life
The poet then expresses the sense of the tragedy of life and the sadness resulting
therefrom. He refers to the weariness, the fever, and the fret of human life. This is a world where
men sit and hear each other groan, where palsy shakes the few last hair of aged people, where
young people fall a prey to fatal diseases (like tuberculosis), where merely to think is to become
sorrowful, and where beauty and love are short-lived. Thus the mood of ecstasy with which the
poem had opened changes here into a mood of deep pessimism and despair.
The Mood of Delight in the Midst of Natural Beauty

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The mood of deep pessimism and despair gives way to a mood of delight occasioned by his
imaginative contact with the beauty and glory of Nature. He has flown into the forest on the wings
of his imagination in spite of the retarding effect of the dullness of the brain. (The pure reason or
intellect hinders the free play of the imagination.) The moon, the stars, the flowers growing at his
feet relieve his sense of the tragedy of life.
A Pessimistic Mood Once Again
Next, we find the poet “half in love with easeful death”. He refers to this desire for death
on earlier occasions but at this moment especially he thinks it “rich to die”. This desire for depth
shows a morbidity in the poet. He strikes an unduly pessimistic note. Life has its sorrows and
griefs; beauty and love and youth are short-lived; but Nature has its joys, its charm, its glory. The
reason why the poet yields to a feeling of utter despair is that his personal circumstances are at
the back of his mind when he is writing the poem. His brother Tom had died of tuberculosis; he
himself suffered from this dreaded disease; and his love for Fanny Brawne had not been fulfilled.
The Poet’s Envy of the Nightingale’s Joy
The thought of his own death makes the poet contrast the mortality of human beings with
the immortality of the nightingale. He feels that the song of nightingale which he is now hearing
is the same as was heard in ancient times by emperor and clown, and by the tearful Ruth, the same
that often in the past had unlocked magic casements in the solitary countries of the fairies or the
legendary countries of romance. Having denied a feeling of envy of the nightingale’s joy in the
opening stanza, he now is undoubtedly in a mood of envying the immortality of the nightingale.
A desire to die, expressed in the preceding stanza, here imperceptibly leads him, though implicitly,
to envy the supposed immortality of the bird. In the final stanza, he is again overcome by a feeling
of melancholy because, not only is the nightingale’s song fading away, but also because his
imaginative flight into the forest has ended and he finds himself face to face with the stern realities
of life. He finds that the nightingale’s song gives rise to an illusion, and illusion which fails, leaving
the listener alone with his cares and griefs.
A Masterpiece
The Ode to a Nightingale shows the ripeness and maturity of Keats’s poetic faculty. This
poem is truly a masterpiece, showing the splendour of Keats’s imagination on its pure romantic
side, and remarkable also for its note of reflection and meditation. The central idea here is the
contrast of the joy and beauty and apparent permanence of the nightingale’s song with the sorrows
of human life and the transitoriness of beauty and love in this world.
Its Melancholy, and the Note of Pessimism
A passionate melancholy broods over the whole poem. The passage describing the sorrows
and misfortunes of life is deeply pessimistic. The world is full of weariness, fever, and fret, and the
groans of suffering humanity. Palsy afflicts the old and premature, death overtakes the young. To
think here is to be full of sorrow; both beauty and love are short-lived.
The Reason for the Poet’s Despondency
Keats wrote this poem shortly after the death (from consumption) of his brother Tom to
whom he was deeply attached. He was also perhaps thinking of the premature death of Elizabeth

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Taylor. He was therefore weighed down by a profound sense of the tragedy of life; and of that
sense of tragedy, this poem is a poignant expression.
The Desire to Die
The note of pessimism is found also in the lines where the poet expresses a desire to die,
“to cease upon the midnight with no pain”. When we remember that Keats actually died a
premature death, we realise the note of unconscious prophecy in these lines, which for this reason
become still more pathetic.
Sorrows of Life in General; and the Personal Griefs
The passionately personal and human character of this poem is thus obvious. It reveals
Keats’s sense of the tragedy of human life in general and his sense of personal suffering in
particular. The poem brings before our eyes a painful picture of the sorrows and griefs of human
life, and at the same time it conveys to us the melancholy and sadness which had afflicted Keats
for various reasons. The poem is the cry of a wounded soul.
Its Rich Sensuousness and Pictorial Quality
The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats’s pictorial quality and his rich
sensuousness. We have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which
the poet expresses a passionate desire for some Provincial wine or the red wine from the fountain
of the Muses have a rich appeal:
O for a draught of vintage, that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!
These lines bring before us a delightful picture of Provence with its fun and frolic, jollity, merry-
making, drinking and dancing. Similarly, the beaker full of the sparkling, blushful Hippocrene is
highly pleasing.
Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by
stars, looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies:
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays.
The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the
poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading
violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.
Apart from these sensuous pictures, there is also the vivid and pathetic image of Ruth
when, sick for home, she stood tearful amid the alien corn. This is a highly suggestive picture
calling up many associations to the mind of one who is acquainted with the Bible.
Its Lyric Intensity
The poem is a beautiful example of lyrical poetry, poetry which is the impassioned
expression of passionate feelings. The poem opens with a passionate feeling of joy akin to the

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benumbing effect of some drug. This is followed by a passionate desire for wine. Then comes
a passionate melancholy born of the spectacle of sorrow in this world. Next is
the passionate delight in flowers and blossoms, followed by & passionate desire for death. The
lyrical intensity of this ode is, indeed, one of the reasons of its greatness as poetry.
Its Style
The poem is written in a superb style. It displays Keats’s power as a master of poetic
language at its highest. Keats here shows consummate skill in a choice of words and in making
original and highly expressive phrases. Certain phrases, expressions and lines continue to haunt
the mind of the reader long after he has read the poem. The phrase “the blushful Hippocrene”
which refers to the fountain of the Muses and its red wine looking like the blushing cheeks of a
pretty girl is indeed beautiful. Again, this wine has beaded bubbles “winking at the brim”. The
word “winking” here means sparkling but how much more is suggested by this word! The bubbles
seem to be inviting a man to the wine as a girl’s wink would invite him to her company. Another
expressive phrase is “purple-stained mouth”, that is, a mouth which has been stained red by wine.
Memorable also are the following phrases and expressions—”verdurous blooms” (line 40);
“embalmed darkness” (line, 43); “Mid-May’s eldest child—the coming musk-rose” (lines 48-49);
“The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves” (line 50). The line “the weariness, the fever and
the fret” admirably describes the sorrows and perplexities of life. “Leaden-eyed despair”
effectively conveys the dullness in the eyes of a man who is in a state of despair. Still another
memorable line is: “To thy high requiem become a sod.”
The Romantic Character of the Poem
The Ode to a Nightingale is a highly romantic poem. Its romanticism is due to (a)its rich
sensuousness, (b) its note of intense desire and its deep melancholy, (c) its suggestiveness, (d) its
sweet music, and its fresh and original phrases. Two lines in the poem represent the high water-
mark of pure romanticism:
The same that oft-times hath
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
The touch of the supernatural, the mystery, and above all the suggestiveness of these lines have
made them a test by which purely romantic poetry can be judged and measured.
In form this poem is a “regular ode”. There is a uniformity of the number of lines and of
the rhyme-scheme in all the stanzas.
Sidney Colvin Observes
In the Ode on Melancholy, Keats expresses his experience of the habitual interchange and
alternation of the emotions of joy and pain. The same crossing and inter-mingling of opposite
currents of feeling finds expression, together with unequalled touches of the poet’s feeling for
Nature and romance, in the Ode to a Nightingale. It is not the particular nightingale he had heard
singing in the garden that he speaks about in the poem, but a type of the race imagined as singing
in some far-off scene of woodland mystery and beauty. Thither he tries to follow her: first by aid
of the spell of some southern wine—a spell which he makes us realise in lines suggestive of the
southern richness and joy. Then follows a contrasted vision of all his own and mankind’s
sufferings which he will leave behind him. Nay, he needs not the aid of Bacchus. Poetic fancy alone

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shall carry him thither. For a moment he mistrusts its power, but the next moment finds himself
where he longed to be, listening to the imagined song in the imagined woodland, and imagining
in the darkness all the secrets of the season and the night. In this joy he remembers how often the
thought of death has seemed welcome to him, and thinks it would be more welcome now than
ever before. This nightingale would not cease her song—and here, by a breach of logic which is
also a flaw in the poetry, he contrasts the shortness of human life, meaning the life of the
individual, with the permanence of the nightingale’s life, meaning the life of the race. This last
thought leads him off into the ages, whence he brings back memorable touches of far-off Bible
and legendary romance in the stanza closing with the words “in faery lands forlorn”. Then,
catching up his own last word “forlorn”, with an abrupt change of mood and meaning, he returns
to daily consciousness, and with the fading away of his forest-dream the poem closes.
According to Sidney Colvin, the Ode To a Nightingale is not strictly faultless, but its
revealing imaginative insight, its conquering poetic charm, its touch that strikes so lightly but so
deep, are preferable to faultlessness. With the Ode On a Grecian Urn, this poem is “among the
veriest glories of our poetry”.
Allen Tate calls the Nightingale Ode“an emblem of one limit of our experience: the
impossibility of synthesizing, in the order .of experience, the antinomy of the ideal and the
real”…..Allen Tate finds little to say in defence of the third stanza which, he says, is bad eighteenth-
century personification, without on the one hand Pope’s precision, or the energy of Blake on the
other. “It gives us,” says Tate, “a picture of common reality, in which the life of man is all
mutability and frustration. But here if anywhere in the poem the necessity to dramatise time or
the pressure of actuality, is paramount. Keats has no language of his own for this realm of
experience.”
F.R. Leavis has said that the Ode to a Nightingale records the poet’s mood of indulgence
and serves equally as an indulgence for the reader. Leavis is obviously being too severe or austere
in his disapproval-of the “fine excess” of the poem. Keats’s profusion and prodigality, one must
recognise, is here modified by a principle of sobriety. Wholeness, intensity, and naturalness are
the qualities of this ode. Nature is, indeed, the real norm, Nature as it appears to the romantic
imagination; wholeness and intensity are attributes of Nature, as are freedom, ease, spontaneity,
harmony, and sobriety. Imagined as the golden age of Flora and the country green, and more fully
as the forest of the nightingale, it becomes first the bird, the voice of Nature; then the ideal poet;
and finally the ideal itself. This Nature is the antithesis of the world of privation depicted in the
third stanza.
Cleanth Books and Robert Penn Warrenon the Ode to a Nightingale
A Striking Contrast in the Poem
In this poem the world of mankind and the world of the nightingale are contrasted with
each other. The listener in the human world responds to the song of the nightingale, and feels an
intense desire to find his way into the world in which the bird sings “of summer in full-throated
ease”. For the poet, the world of the nightingale is a world of richness and vitality, of deep
sensuousness, of natural beauty and fertility; this world appeals to the imagination and has its
own ideality.

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The Poet’s Reverie and its End

The reverie into which the poet falls carries him deep into the “embalmed darkness” out
of which the bird is singing and deep into a communion in which he can make his peace even with
death. But the meditative trance cannot last. With the very first word of the eighth stanza, the
reverie is broken. The word “forlorn” occurs to the poet as the adjective describing the remote and
magical world suggested by the nightingale’s song. But the poet suddenly realises that this word
applies with greater precision to himself. The effect is that of an abrupt stumbling. With the new
and chilling meaning of “forlorn”, the song of the nightingale itself alters: it becomes a “plaintive
anthem”. The song becomes fainter. What had before the power to make the sorrow in man fade
away from a harsh and bitter world, now itself “fades” (line 75) and the poet is left alone in the
silence.
Two Issues in the Poem
The Ode to a Nightingale is a very rich poem. Two particular issues in it deserve attention.
One is the close connection that the poet establishes between pleasure and pain; and the other is
the connection between life and death.
The Double Effect of the Bird’s Song
The song of the nightingale has a curious double effect. It makes the poet’s heart “ache”,
but this ache results from the poet’s being too happy in the happiness of the nightingale. The song
also acts as an opiate, making the poet feel drowsy and benumbed. Opiates are used to deaden
pain, and in a sense the song of the bird does give the poet momentary relief from his unhappiness,
oppressed as he is with the “weariness, the fever, and the fret” of the world of humanity.
The Yearning to Escape from the Human World
Secondly, the nightingale’s song makes the poet yearn to escape from a world
overshadowed with death—”Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies”, “Where but to
think is to be full of sorrow”. Yet when he has approached closest to the nightingale’s world, the
highest rapture that he can conceive of is to die—”To cease upon the midnight with no pain”. The
world of the nightingale is not a world untouched by death, but one in which death is not a
negative and blighting thing. The question that arises is, “What is it that prevents the poet from
entering the world of the nightingale ?” He tells us himself: it is the dull brain that perplexes and
retards. The beaker of wine for which he had earlier called, and the free play of the imagination
(“the viewless wings of Poesy”)—both have this in common: they can release a man from the
tyranny of the dull brain. The brain insists upon clarity and logical order; it is an order that must
be dissolved if the poet is to escape into the richer world of the nightingale.
The World of the Nightingale, Also a Saddening World
But the world of the nightingale is also a world characterized by darkness. We associate
darkness with death, but this darkness is replete with the most intense life. This darkness is,
indeed, emphasised: “shadows numberless” (line 9); “the forest dim” (line 20); “verdurous
glooms” (line 40). Having entered the dim forest, the poet “cannot see”. Though the fifth stanza
abounds in sensuous detail and appeals so powerfully to all the senses, most of the images of sight
are fancied by the poet. He does not actually see the Queen-Moon or the stars. He can only “guess”
what flowers are at his feet. He has found his way into an “embalmed darkness”. The word

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“embalmed” primarily means “sweet with balm”, but the word is also suggestive of death. In
finding his way imaginatively into the dark forest, the poet has approached death.
The Nightingale’s Environment Described Realistically
Keats has described the flowery environment of the nightingale with full honesty. His
primary emphasis is on fertility and growth, but he accepts the fact that death and change have
their place here too: the violets, for instance, are thought of as “fast-fading”. But the atmosphere
of this world of Nature is very different from that of the human world haunted by death, where
men sit and hear each other groan. The world of Nature is a world of cyclic change: the “seasonable
month”, “the coming musk-rose”. Consequently the world of Nature can appear fresh and
immortal, like the bird whose song seems to be its spirit.
Man’s Alienation from Nature
The poem is not only about man’s world as contrasted with the world of Nature, or death
and deathlessness, but also about alienation and wholeness. It is man’s necessary alienation from
Nature that makes death so horrible. To dissolve, to fade into the warm darkness is to merge into
the eternal pattern of Nature. In such a communion, death itself becomes something positive—a
flowering, a fulfilment.
The Bird, Wholly Merged in Nature
The bird is not alienated from Nature, but wholly merged in Nature. The-bird shares in
the immortality of Nature which remains, through all its changes, unwearied and beautiful. The
poet does not think this particular bird to be immortal. The bird is in harmony with its world—
not, as man is, in competition with his (“No hungry generations tread thee down”); and the bird
cannot conceive of its separation from the world which it expresses and of which it is a part. It is
in this sense that the nightingale is immortal. Man knows that he is born to die, knows the
weariness, the fever, and the fret of the human world, knows in short “What thou among the leaves
hast never known” (line 22); and this knowledge overshadows man’s life and all his songs. Such
knowledge overshadows this poem and gives it its special poignancy.
The Effect of the Word “Forlorn”
With the word “forlorn” the poet’s attempt to enter the world of the nightingale collapses.
The music which almost succeeded in making him “fade far away” now itself fades and in a
moment is “buried deep in the next valley-glades” (lines 77-78).
Richard Harter Fogle on the Ode to a Nightingale
A Picture of the Opposites in the Poem
This critic considers the Ode to a Nightingale to be a romantic poem of the family of Kubla
Khan and The Eve of St. Agnes in that it describes a choice and rare experience which is remote
from the commonplace. A treatment of this sort of experience requires great skill. The principal
stress of the Nightingale Ode, according to this critic, is a struggle between ideal and actual. It
also implies the opposition between pleasure and pain, imagination and reason, fullness and
privation, permanence and change, Nature and the human, art and life, freedom and bondage,
waking and dream.

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The Meeting of Extremes

The drugged dull pain in lines 1-4 is a frame and a contrast for the poignant pleasure of
lines 6-10; at th6 same time it is inseparable from it. Extremes meet, as Keats has said in A Song
of Opposites and the Ode On Melancholy. They meet because they are extremes, as very hot and
cold water are alike to the touch: their extremity is their affinity. Both pleasure and pain are in the
opening stanza heightened, and meet a common intensity. The felicity which is permanent in the
nightingale is transient and therefore excessive in the poet. It is so heavy a burden that it can be
endured only briefly. Its attractions make everyday living ugly by contrast. Allen Tate refers to the
Nightingale Ode as revealing the dilemma of the romantic imagination when faced with the
contrast between the ideal and the real. Good romantic poems, like Kubla Khan and
the Nightingale Ode, define this dilemma, dramatise it, and transform it to a source of strength.
Abundance, Fullness, or Completeness
The theme of the second stanza is abundance or fullness. The ideal lies in completeness.
The nightingale sings in full-throated ease, and the beaker is full of the true, blushful Hippocrene.
This fullness contrasts with the sad satiety of the third stanza, where but to think is to be full of
sorrow; it is modulated in the embalmed darkness of the fifth stanza; and it ends in the sixth
stanza in a climatic fullness of song, with the nightingale pouring forth her soul abroad in ecstasy.
A Concentration of Effect
The draught of vintage has been cooled a long ago in the deep-delved earth; the fountain
of the Muses is the true, the blushful Hippocrene, and the beaker is brimful, with purple-stained
mouth. Such concentration of effect is probably what Keats had in mind when he advised Shelley
to “load every rift with ore”
An Escape from Actuality Through Wine
The draught of vintage symbolises an imaginative escape from actuality. The longing to
fade away into the forest dim is in order to avoid another kind of fading away, the melancholy
dissolution of change and physical decay. In the third stanza a world of privation is substituted
for the golden world of the second stanza. For ease is substituted the weariness, the fever, and the
fret; for abundance, a few, sad, last grey hairs. In this world of privation youth grows pale, and
spectre-thin, and dies.
A Vivid Picture of Distress and Grief
The privation of the third stanza is as vividly depicted as the ideal abundance of the second.
The personifications of age, youth, beauty, and love are vitalised by their contexts; they are
comparable to “veiled Melancholy” in her “sovran shrine” in theOde on Melancholy, and the
personifications of To Autumn. The process of tedium, time, and decay is effectively conveyed in
the third stanza, and the four-fold repetition of “Where” is a further reinforcement.
(According to Douglas Bush, the real theme of Keats’s six great odes is the sadness of
mutability.)
The Value of the Ideal
In the Nightingale Ode, Keats is affirming the value of the ideal, and this is the primary
fact. He is also recognising the power of the actual, and this is an important but secondary

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consideration. Keats is at once agonised and amused at the inescapable discrepancy between
them. He reconciles them by a prior imaginative acceptance of the unity of experience, by means
of which he invests them with a common extremity and intensity of feelirtg. He need not give
equal attention to both, for the actual can take care of itself; it is the trail ideal which requires
support.
The Romantic, Picturesque Fourth Stanza
The forest scene of the fourth stanza is romantically picturesque without being really
pictorial: one does not visualise it, but its composition is describable in visual metaphor. The
moonlight, a symbol of imagination, intermingling with darkness suggests the enchantment of
mystery. After thus using suggestion Keats goes on, in the fifth stanza, to specification. The
imagery in the fifth stanza is particular and sensuous, but not highly visual. Hawthorn, eglantine,
violets, and musk-rose are important chiefly for their pastoral association. Here, as in the second
stanza, the theme is fullness, but with an added pathos because of the introduction of darkness
and death in the sixth stanza. The generous fertility of Nature is inseparable from the grave.
A Reasonable Inference from the Experience of the Forest
The death mentioned in the sixth stanza is a reasonable inference from the experience of
the forest. As freedom, ease, intensity, fullness, and consummation the two are one. Death is
easeful and rich. “To cease upon the midnight” is in one respect the same as “pouring forth thy
soul abroad”. In each is an outpouring, and a release from the prisoning self. This imaginative
acceptance of death is not, however, without reservation. The poet has been only half in love with
easeful death. The acceptance, in fact, includes the reservation, since it is an acceptance of the
limits as well as the freedoms of this death:
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod.
The Nightingale’s Immortality
In a swift transition the death theme of the sixth stanza turns to a basis for the immortality
of the nightingale in the seventh stanza. The objection that the nightingale, is not immortal need
not trouble us. The objection has been met by the suggestion that Keats is thinking of the race of
nightingales, and not the individual nightingale. At any rate, the bird in this stanza is a universal
and undying voice: the voice of Nature, of imaginative sympathy, and therefore of an ideal
romantic poetry, infinitely powerful and profuse (compare the “profuse strains of unpremeditated
art” of Shelley’s To a Skylark, and the “music loud and long” of Kubla Khan). As sympathy, the
voice of the nightingale resolves all differences: it speaks to high and low (emperor and clown); it
comforts the human home-sickness of Ruth and frees her from bitter isolation; and equally it
opens the casements of the remote and magical. Lines 65-70 combine the two kinds of
romanticism— the domestic and the exotic. But both the kinds are linked by their common
purpose of fusing the usual with the strange. Ruth is distanced and framed by time and rich
association, but in relation to the magic casements she is homely and familiar. These magic
casements are the climax of the imaginative experience.
The Fancy Cannot Cheat So Well
The final stanza is a soft and quiet withdrawal from the heights. The word “forlorn” is like
a bell which tolls the death of the imagination. Ruth is forlorn in her loneliness. The faery lands

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are pleasurably forlorn in a remoteness which is really the condition of their value. In any case,
the word brings the poet to the common, everyday world. The fact that fancy cannot cheat so well
is not a rejection of imagination but part of the total experience.
The Complexity of Feeling and Thought in the Poem
The Ode to a Nightingale contains the highest, the fullest, the most intense, the most
valuable mental experience which Keats can imagine. This experience is the centre of the poem,
and the basis of its unity. Within this unity, however, is a complex of feeling and thought which
moves in alternate rises and falls, a series of waves. These waves are not of equal height; they rise
gradually to a climax in the seventh stanza, and the rise subsides in the conclusion.
Keats' ODE TO AUTUMN

1. INTRODUCTION
The Striking Beauty of Autumn
This poem was written by Keats in September, 1819. He was greatly struck by the beauty
of the season. The air was fine, and there was a temperate sharpness about it. The weather seemed
“chaste”. The stubble-fields looked better than they did in spring. Keats was so impressed by the
beauty of the weather that he recorded his mood in the form of this ode.
One of Keats’s Finest Poems

The Ode to Autumn ranks among the finest poems of Keats. The treatment of the subject
is perfectly objective or impersonal. The poet keeps himself completely out of the picture. He only
describes certain sights and sounds without expressing his personal reaction to these sights and
sounds. The poem is a perfect Nature-lyric. No human sentiment finds expression; only the beauty
and bounty of Nature during autumn are described.
An Autobiographical Element in the Poem
Sometimes this ode is taken as having an autobiographical quality: it is possible to connect
its serenity with the way of Keats’s own life. However, it is almost certain that he simply tried to
catch the spirit of an autumn afternoon.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
The Progress of Thought and Feeling in the Poem
Here is a poem in which a season has been personified and made to live. In the first stanza,
the poet describes the fruits of autumn, the fruits coming to maturity in readiness for harvesting.
In the second stanza, autumn is personified as a woman present at the various operations of the
harvest and at cider-pressing. In the last stanza, the end of the year is associated with sunset; the
songs of spring are over and night is falling, but there is no feeling of sadness because autumn has
its own songs. The close of the ode, though solemn, breathes the spirit of hope.

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The Fruits of Autumn

Autumn is a season of ripe fruitfulness. It is the time of the ripening of grapes, apples,
gourds, hazelnuts, etc. It is also the time when the bees suck the sweetness from “later flowers”
and n\ake honey. Thus autumn is pictured in the stanza as bringing all the fruits of earth to
maturity in readiness for harvesting.
The Occupations of Autumn
In the second stanza, autumn is seen in the person of a reaper, a winnower, a gleaner, and
a cider-presser. Reaping, winnowing, gleaning and cider-pressing are all operations connected
with the harvest and are, therefore, carried on during autumn. Autumn is depicted firstly as a
harvester sitting carelessly in the field during a winnowing operation; secondly, as a tired reaper
fallen asleep in the very midst of reaping; thirdly, as a gleaner walking homewards with a load on
the head; and fourthly, as a cider-presser watching intently the apple-juice flowing out of the
cider-press.
The Songs of Autumn
Autumn is not altogether devoid of music. If spring has its songs, autumn too has its
sounds and songs. In the evening, when the crimson light of the setting sun falls upon the stubble-
fields, a chorus of natural sounds is heard. The gnats utter their mournful sounds; the full-grown
lambs bleat loudly; the hedge-crickets chirp; the robin’s high and delicate notes are heard; and
the swallows twitter in the sky. In this last stanza the close of the year is associated with sunset
and night-fall.
Its Faultless Construction
This is the most faultless of Keats’s odes in point of construction. The first stanza gives us
the bounty of Autumn, the second describes the occupations of the season, and the last dwells
upon its sounds. Indeed, the poem is a complete and concrete picture of Autumn, “the season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness”.
Its Sensuousness
The bounty of Autumn has been described with all its sensuous appeal. The vines
suggesting grapes, the apples, the gourds, the hazels with their sweet kernel, the bees suggesting
honey—all these appeal to our senses of taste and smell. The whole landscape is made to appear
fresh and scented. There is great concentration in each line of the first stanza. Each line is like the
branch of a fruit-tree laden with fruit to the breaking-point.
Its Vivid Imagery
The second stanza contains some of the most vivid pictures in English poetry. Keats’s
pictorial quality is here seen at its best. Autumn is personified and presented to us in the figure of
the winnower, “sitting careless on a granary floor”, the reaper “on a half-reaped furrow sound
asleep”, the gleaner keeping “steady thy laden head across a brook”, and a spectator watching with
patient look a cider-press and the last oozings therefrom. The reaper, the winnower, the gleaner,
and the cider-presser symbolise Autumn. These pictures make the poem human and universal
because the eternal labours of man are brought before the eyes of the reader.

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The Poet’s Keen Observation of Nature

The third stanza is a collection of the varied sounds of Autumn—the choir of gnats, the
bleating of lambs, the singing of crickets, the whistling of red-breasts, and the twittering of
swallows. Keats’s interest in small and homely creatures is fully evidenced in these lines. The
whole poem demonstrates Keats’s interest in Nature and his keen and minute observation of
natural sights and sounds. Keats’s responsiveness and sensitivity to natural phenomena is one of
the striking qualities of his poetry.
Its Objectivity and its Greek Character
The poem is characterised by complete objectivity. The poet keeps himself absolutely out
of the picture. Nor docs he express any emotion whether of joy or melancholy. He gives the objects
of feeling, not the feeling itself. The poem is written in a calm and serene mood. There is no
discontent, no anguish, no bitterness of any kind. There is no philosophy in the poem, no allegory,
no inner meaning. We are just brought face to face with “Nature in all her richness of tint and
form”. The poem breathes the spirit of Greek poetry. In fact, it is one of the most Greek
compositions by Keats. There is the Greek touch in the personification of Autumn and there is the
Greek note in the poet’s impersonal manner of dwelling upon Nature.
Felicity of Diction
We have here the usual felicity of diction for which Keats is famous. Phrases like “mellow
fruitfulness”, “maturing sun”, “hair soft-lifted”, “barred clouds” which “bloom the soft-dying day”,
“hilly bourn” are examples of Keats’s happy coinages. Nor is poetic artifice wanting to add beauty
to the verse. The alliteration in the following lines is, for instance, noteworthy:
To smell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
Several words here contain the same “z” sound—hazel, shells, flowers, bees, days, cease, cells. The
abundance of “m” sound in these lines is also noteworthy: plump, more, warm, summer, brimni’d
clammy.
Its Form
The rhyme-scheme in this ode is the same (except for a little variation) in all the stanzas
each of which consists of 11 lines. Thus it is a “regular” ode.
A Critic’s Comment
“Most satisfying of all the Odes, in thought and expression, is the Ode To Autumn. Most
satisfying because, for all the splendour of diction in the others, there are times when the poetic
fire dwindles for a moment, whereas in this ode, from its inception to its close, matter and manner
are not only superbly blended, but every line carries its noble freight of beauty. The first stanza is
a symphony of colour, the second a symphony of movement, the third a symphony of sound. The
artist shapes the first and last, and in the midst the man, the thinker, gives us its human

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significance. Thus is the poem perfected, its sensuous imagery enveloping as it were its vital idea.”
(A. Compton-Rickett)
David Perkins on the Ode to Autumn

A Significant Ode
David Perkins, quoting another critic, says that this ode is regarded as “a very nearly
perfect piece of style” but that it has “little to say”. However, says David Perkins, this ode is very
“significant”. Even more than Keats’s other odes, To Autumn, is “objective, oblique and
impersonal, carried scarcely at all by direct statement that involves the poet”. Its expression, like
that of the Grecian Urn or the Nightingale, is concrete and symbolic, and as in these other odes,
the symbol adopted has been previously established in Keats’s poetry. Keats’s view of the seasons
is on the whole rather conventional: spring is the time of budding, summer of fulfilment, and
winter of death. Autumn coming between summer and winter, can be seen as the intensifying and
prolonging of summer. In other words, autumn suggests precisely that lengthening-out of
fulfilment as its crest or climax which Keats had desired to find in the concrete world. So the poet,
turning to the concrete, contemplate it with serenity.
The Imagery in the First Stanza
Autumn, accordingly, is described as a season of “mellow fruitfulness”. The sun is ripening
or “maturing” the earth, “conspiring” to load the vines and bend the apple trees, “to swell the
gourd, and plump the hazel shells”. The season fills “all fruit with ripeness to the core”; and these
images of full, inward ripeness and strain suggest that the maturing can go no further, that the
fulfilment has reached its climax. Even the cells of the bees are over-brimmed. Yet the ripening
continues, “budding more, and still more, later flowers”. The bees “think warm days will never
cease”. Thus through the imagery the poem suggests a prolonging of fulfilment. At the same time,
however, there are indirect images of ageing. For the sun is maturing—it is not only ripening the
things, but is also growing older. So also autumn itself, the “close-bosom friend” of the sun.
The Imagery in the Second Stanza
The second stanza picks up and continues imagery of arrested motion in the first. Autumn
is here personified in a variety of attitudes; but the dominant image is of autumn as the harvester—
and a harvester that is in a sense another reaper, death itself. Instead of harvesting, however,
autumn is motionless, death being momentarily held off as the ripening still continues. First
autumn appears “sitting careless on a granary floor”. The granary is where the harvest would be
stored, but autumn is not bringing in the grain. The assonance and alliteration of the line, “Thy
hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”, leads into the image of autumn feeling drowsy or sleepy
on a half-reaped furrow—again the harvest arrested. Finally autumn is seen near a cider-press
where it watches “the last oozings hours by hours”. This is one of the two images suggesting
activity, the other being the gleaner with laden head crossing a brook; but the motion is so slow
that the reader takes the cider-press almost as a repetition of the half-reaped furrow. But, of
course, these are the last, oozings, and the harvest is drawing to a close. The notion of death is
present but it will emerge more emphatically in the third stanza.

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The Imagery in the Last Stanza; the Mood and the Thought of the Poem
Things reveal their essential identity most intensely at the moment if dying or readiness
to die. So the last stanza begins with the one comment the poet offers in his own person. “Where
are the songs of Spring?” but there is no rebellion in the answer: “Think not of them, thou hast
thy music too”. There follows an image of the day, which, like autumn, is about to end, and the
death is accompanied by a fulfilment; for as it dies the day blooms all flowers (“While barred
clouds bloom the soft-dying day”). The stanza proceeds with images of death or withdrawal, and
of song, and the songs are a funeral dirge for the dying year. At the same time, there is a tone of
tenderness in the stanza; and the objectivity of the last few lines suggests an acceptance which
includes even the fact of death. Death is here recognised as something inherent in the course of
things, the condition and price of all fulfilment, having like the spring and summer of life its own
distinctive character or “music” which is also to be prized and relished. In the last analysis,
perhaps, the serenity and acceptance here expressed are aesthetic. The ode is, after all, a poem of
contemplation. The symbol of autumn compels that attitude. The poet’s own fears, ambitions and
passions are not directly engaged, and hence he can be relatively withdrawn. The poet seems to
suggest that life in all its stages has a certain identity and beauty which man can appreciate by
disengaging his own ego. “Thus the symbol permits, and the poem as a whole expresses, an
emotional reconciliation to the human experience of process.”
Robin May head on the Ode to Autumn
An Acceptance of Impermanence
Superficially altogether different from the Ode On Melancholy, To Autumn, is deeply
related to that poem. The Melancholy ode accepts the impermanence of beauty and joy as
inevitable. In the Ode To Autumn, impermanence is again accepted, and accepted without the
least trace of sadness because Keats is able to see it as part of a larger and richer permanence.
The Continuity of Life
This greater permanence is the continuity of life itself, in which the impermanence of the
individual human existence is one tiny aspect of a vast and deathless pattern. The rotation of the
seasons offers a symbol of this continuity that is immediately satisfying. When Keats, in the last
stanza, refers to the “music” of autumn, he is obviously pointing out the futility of regretting that
spring has gone by. What is past is past. After all, autumn has its own characteristic sounds, which
are as much part of the year as the songs of spring. Moreover, although autumn will be followed
by the cold and barrenness of winter, winter will in turn give way to a fresh spring. Life goes on.
The individual year may be drawing to a close, but there will be a new year to take its place. This
is indirectly conveyed with wonderful effect in the concluding line of the ode: “And gathering
swallows twitter in the skies”. In one way the line gives a hint of the coming winter, for the
swallows are gathering to migrate to warmer climates. Yet we remember that migratory birds
return when the cold weather ends, so that the very hint of their 1’orihcoming departure carries
with it a suggestion of their re-appearance when warm days come again.
The Structure of the Poem
The handling of verse-structure is here wonderfully resourceful. The use of the run-on line
in the first stanza, for instance, is noteworthy. If “swell” and “plump” give the outward signs of fat
richness, the stress on “sweet kernel”, inevitable after the pause at the end of the previous line,
vividly makes us think of the lusciousness within. And the imagined sweetness leads to even

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greater sweetness of the honey made by the bees. The loaded abundance is suggested by the heavy
movement in the last line which describes the over-brimming of their cells. There is so much
oozing sweetness here that the honey-combs are insufficient to hold it all.
As F.R. Leavis has shown (in Revaluation), Keats employs verse-structure in the last
four lines of the second stanza to enact the very movement of the gleaner. Keats is here able to
suggest the prudent hesitation of the man (or woman) carefully balancing his load before he
crosses the brook. Again, the extreme slowness with which the drops of cider issue from the press
is suggested by the line: “Thou watchest the last oozings, hour by hour.”
No Resentment or Horror About the Fact of Death
There are various hints of death in the final stanza, but the idea of death is not treated with
horror or resentment. The day is dying softly, the rosy “bloom” of sunset taking away from the
stark bareness of the now fully-reaped corn-fields. And, in any case, the very reference to the close
of the day, like the final line about the swallows, carries with it a suggestion of its opposite. Just
as the swallows will come back next year, so another day will down, for the great movement of life
goes on, however short the existence of the individual.
Walter Jackson Bate on the Ode to Autumn
One of the Most Nearly Perfect Poems
To Autumn is one of the most nearly perfect poems in English. The different parts of the
poem contribute directly to the whole, with nothing left dangling or independent. The Ode to a
Nightingale is a less “perfect” though a greater poem.
The Complete Objectivity of the Poem
The poet himself is completely absent from the poem; there is not “I”, no suggestion of the
discursive language that we find in the other odes; the poem is entirely concrete, and self-
sufficient in and through its concreteness. There is also a successful union of the ideal (that is, of
the heart’s desire) and reality. What the heart really wants is being found (in the first stanza,
fullness and completion; in the second, a prolonging of that fulfilment): Here at last is something
of a genuine paradise, therefore. It even has its deity—a benevolent deity that wants not only to
“load and bless”, but also to “spare”, to prolong, to “set budding more”. And yet all this is put with
concrete exactness and fidelity.
The Dominant Aspects of Autumn
Each of the three stanzas concentrates on a dominant aspect of autumn. The theme of the
first is ripeness, of growth now reaching its climax. Yet growth is still surprisingly going on. The
second stanza depicts stillness, for now autumn is conceived as a reaper or harvester, but a
harvester who is not harvesting. Movement begins only in the latter part of the stanza. Even then
it is suggested only in the momentary glimpse of the gleaner crossing a brook; and autumn then
stops again to watch the slow pressing of the apples into cider as the hours pass. There is a hint
that the end is approaching: these are the “last oozings”.
A Shift in the Final Stanza
In the final stanza, the personified figure of autumn is replaced by concrete images of life, and of
life unafflicted by any thought of death: the gnats, the hedge-crickets, the redbreasts. Moreover,

84
it is life that can exist in much the same way at other limes than autumn. Only two images are
peculiar to the season—the “stubble-plains” and the “full-grown lambs”. The mind is free to
associate the wailful mourning of the gnats with a funeral dirge for the dying year, but the sound
is no more confined to autumn alone than is the “soft-dying” of any day; and if the swallows are
gathering, they are not necessarily gathering for migration.
Keats' ODE TO FANCY

1. INTRODUCTION
The Pleasures of Fancy
In this poem, Keats describes the pleasures which one can enjoy by means of the exercise
of one’s fancy or imagination. It is regarded as one of the most beautiful poems of Keats. It
certainly possesses an outdoor, refreshing quality. The central idea that reality, however beautiful
it may be, can never satisfy us fully and that true satisfaction can be found only in the pleasures
of the imagination, is perfectly convincing. The poem shows the influence of Milton in its exquisite
metrical harmony. There are echoes in it from Milton’s L’Allegroand II Peqseroso.
2. CRITICAL SUMMARY
The Fleeting Nature of the Pleasures of Reality
The pleasures of reality, says the poet, melt away soon, but the pleasures of the
imagination are ever-fresh and everlasting. We should, therefore, give free reins to our
imagination. Pleasure is never to be found at home. If we let our fancy loose, it will bring for us
from abroad all the pleasures that we wish to enjoy. (Lines 1-9)
The Temporary Pleasures of Three of the Seasons
Summer, spring, and autumn, all have their beauties. But these seasons can never give us
real and lasting pleasure, because of the imperfections which all the pleasures of reality suffer
from, and because of the feeling of weariness or disgust to which they all ultimately lead. The
flowers and fruits of these different seasons soon fade; and we soon tire of the pleasures which
these seasons provide. (Lines 10-15)
Winter, the True Season of Pleasure
The true season for pleasure, says the poet, is winter. (This is, of course, a paradoxical
statement because winter in England is a season of great hardship and suffering. What the poet
means is that in winter one can sit down in a cosy corner of the house and give free reins to one’s
fancy.) Sitting by the fireside on a wintry night, we can send our fancy on her travels, and we can
enjoy all the beauties of summer, spring, and autumn. The buds and bells of May, and the heaped
wealth of autumn, with all the delights of summer will be mingled together for us, and we can
enjoy these as we might enjoy three excellent wines mingled in a cup. We can hear the distant
harvest songs, the sweet birds welcoming the morning, and the rooks cawing and searching for
stick and straws. We can see in our imagination the flowers different seasons, such as the daisy,
the marigold, the lily, the primrose and the hyacinth. We can see the field-mouse and the snake
emerging from their underground abode after their winter-long hibernation. We can see the nest-

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eggs being hatched; we can see the swarm of bees; we can hear the ripe acorns falling down to the
ground. (Lines 16-66)
The Ever-fresh and Ever-lasting Pleasures of Fancy
Only the pleasures of fancy are ever-fresh and everlasting. Pleasures of reality are lost as
soon as they are enjoyed. The beauty of even the loveliest woman becomes stale if we see her
everyday. Her cheeks, her lips, her eyes, and her voice lose all their appeal and charm as a result
of too much familiarity. But a beloved who has been created by fancy will retain her beauty and
charm always. It is better to have an imaginary sweetheart than to have a real woman as one’s
sweetheart. This imaginary sweetheart will have eyes as beautiful and sweet as Proserpina had
before she was carried off by Pluto, the god of the underworld. This imaginary sweetheart will
have a waist as beautiful as that of Hebe, the goddess of youth and the cup-bearer of the gods.
(Lines 67-89)
Fancy (or Imagination), a Great Blessing for Human Beings
Indeed, the pleasures of reality are as short-lived as the bubbles formed when rain is
falling. We should, therefore, remove all restraint and restrictions upon our fancy. If fancy is
allowed to roam and to soar freely, it will bring a multitude of pleasures. Let the winged fancy be
given unlimited freedom to wander abroad, and we shall find that it has the capacity to provide
us with those exquisite pleasures which cannot be found at home. (Lines 89-94)
The Main Idea
The subject of this poem is the pleasures of the “fancy”, which here means the
“imagination”. The pleasures of the imagination, says the poet, are ever-fresh and everlasting,
while the pleasures of reality are short-lived. The pleasures of reality are lost as soon as they are
enjoyed, but the pleasures of the imagination have the quality of permanence. The beauty of even
the loveliest woman becomes stale and tiresome as a result of too much familiarity; but the beauty
of an imaginary sweet-heart can never fade or decline. This poem is typical of Keats’s aesthetic
temperament. It teaches us the value of the imagination in lending a permanent appeal and
freshness to the pleasures of reality. One must observe the beautiful things in this world and then
one must use one’s imagination to re-call those things and to create new thing, and thus to enjoy
their charm:
Ever let the Fancy roam,
Pleasure never is at home.
Sensuous Quality
The poem has a richly sensuous appeal. We have numerous pictures of beautiful things
which please our senses. The fruits of autumn, buds and bells of May, the sweet singing of the
birds, the various flowers—the daisy, the marigold, the lily, the primrose—are a kind of feast which
we enjoy as we go through the poem. By the exercise of our fancy, we can see at one glance all the
flowers:

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Thou shall, at one glance, behold

The daisy and the marigold;
White-plumed lilies, and the first
Hedge-grown primrose that hath burst;
Shaded hyacinth, alway
Sapphire queen of the mid-May;
And every leaf, and every flower
Pearled with the self same shower.
Similarly, the sweet-heart whom the imagination has to create would be an embodiment of perfect
beauty and would remind us of Proserpina of ancient mythology. This imaginary sweet-heart
would have a waist and a side as white as Hebe’s. We are here given a lovely picture of Hebe’s
petticoat slipping down to her feet, and Jove becoming “languid” with passion on beholding her
naked physical charms. Even Jove seems to swoon with passion as Porphyro in The Eve of St.
Agnes does:
With a waist and with a side
White as Hebe’s, when her zone
Slipt its golden clasp, and down
Fell her kirtle to her feet,
While she held the goblet sweet,,
And Jove grew languid.
The reference is to ancient mythology in the poem which brings before us the stories of Pluto’s
abduction of Proserpina, and of Jove’s lustful desire for Hebe.
Minute Observation of Nature
The poem shows not only Keats’s love of Nature, but also his close and minute observation
of everything that happens in the world of Nature. We have a vivid picture of the winter and of the
other seasons. The pictures of the field-mouse, the snake, the eggs being hatched in the nests of
birds, the ripe acorns falling down, and the rooks searching for sticks and straws, are examples of
the poet’s interest in even the small details of the life of Nature:
Or the rooks, with busy caw,
Foraging for sticks and straw,
……………………………….
Thou shall see the field-mouse peep
Meagre from its celled sleep;
And the snake, all winter-thin
Cast on sunny bank its skin!
Freckled nest eggs thou shall see
Hatching in the hawthorn-tree,

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When the hen-bird’s wing doth rest

Quiet on her mossy nest……
These pictures fully illustrate Keats’s preference for vivid and concrete imagery.
Jubilation and Melancholy
The mood of the poem on the whole is one of jubilation and exultation, although a streak
of melancholy runs through it. The feeling of melancholy is due to our realisation that the sweet
pleasures of reality melt away quickly; while the feeling of jubilation is due to the fact that our
imagination can more than compensate us for the transitoriness of real pleasures.
Technical Merits
The poem is remarkable also because of its sweet music and harmony. There are some’
very appropriate similes and some felicitous phrases and expressions. The shortness of the
duration of the pleasures of reality is aptly compared to the melting of bubbles:
At a touch sweet Pleasure melteth,
Like to bubbles when rain pelteth.
The imaginative combination of the pleasures of winter, summer and autumn is compared to the
mixing of three wines in a cup which one can enjoy drinking:
She will mix these pleasures up
Like three fit wines in a cup,
And thou shall quaff it:
An imaginary mistress may be as “dulcet-eyed as Ceres’ daughter”, while her waist and side may
be “white as Hebe’s”. Then we have such metaphorical expressions as “the mesh of the Fancy’s
silken leash”, and “Fancy’s prison string”. Among the felicitous phrases we have “Autumn’s red-
lipp’d fruitage”, “Fancy, high-commission’d”, “all the heaped Autumn’s wealth”, “sweet birds an
theming the morn”, “white-plumed lilies”, and “sapphire queen of the mid-May”.
A Critic’s View of this Poem
Speaking about this poem, a commentator says: “Light-hearted though it is, it suggests a
first trying-over of material eventually woven into the Odes; many suggestive images and actual
phrases will be recognised (‘all the heaped Autumn’s wealth’, ‘mid-May’, ‘All the buds and bells of
May’), and the theme of the poem contrasts the transience of natural beauty with the vision of
unfading beauty called up by the poetic imagination.”

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“With the great Odes, we are probably at the apex of Keats’s poetic
powers”. Trace the evolution of Keats’s art till the achievement in the
Odes.
Keats, a Conscious and Hard-Working Artist
Keats was a conscious artist, anxious to load his poetry as fully as possible, with its own
special kind of excellence. We see the result of it in the devoted critical care he gives to his own
poetical development. As we peruse his work, we become aware of a constant effort on his part to
correct faults in technique and emotional tone. He constantly rejects harmful models and chooses
better ones. Above all, he is always thinking out the essentials of his own kind of poetry to the
exclusion of everything else.
Keats’s First Volume of Poems

Keats’s first volume of poems appeared in 1817. The best pieces in this volume are the
introductory I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill, the concluding Sleep and Poetry, and the famous
sonnet, On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer. There is in this early experimental and
immature work an extravagance of speech and excess of emotion. These poems are overcharged
with Spenserian imagery and Elizabethan conceits. But even in his early experiments, there is an
individual note. In I Stood Tip-toe,there are touches that no other poet than Keats could have
given us:
A little noiseless noise among the leaves,
Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.
We find felicities of phrase and a sensitive insight into Nature in this poem:
Here are sweet peas, on tip-toe for a flight:
With wings of gentle flush o’er delicate white,
And taper fingers catching at all things,
To bind them all about with tiny rings.
In Sleep and Poetry, the writer throws a challenge at the whole army of the neo-classical critics.
This poem is faulty in execution, but the point of view of the young Keats is unmistakable:
Beauty was awake:
Why were ye not awake?
We cannot ignore in his early efforts the ornate extravagance, the abuse of double rhymes, the
faulty emphasis, the ugly vulgarities, the poetic stammerings, etc. But the soul of a poet is already
there. Surely, we can expect splendid things from a young man of nineteen who could write On
First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer which is certainly deserving of high praise.

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The Poem Entitled “Endymion”

The next to appear was Endymion(1818). It is a long narrative poem based upon the Greek
myth of the love of the shepherd-prince Endymion for the moon-goddess, Cynthia. It is rambling
and confused, broken by episodes, and in its descriptive passages overloaded with detail. In style
it is diffuse and florid. In its loose romantic couplets, Keats followed the lead of Leigh Hunt’s Story
of Rimini. But he carried freedom to excess, and his verse is at times almost formless. He himself
afterwards spoke of the “slipshod” Endymion, adding: “I have written independently and without
judgment—I may write independently, and with judgment, hereafter. I was never afraid of
failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.” It is undoubtedly an immature
poem and has its faults. But if contains many passages of great poetical beauty. It is based, too,
upon a remarkable view of love and life. This view is the key to the plot of the story which is
otherwise fantastic and unintelligible. Endymion is man, the poet; the Moon is poetry or the
principle of Beauty in all things; and Cynthia, the moon-goddess is the ideal beauty or love of
woman. Man, seeing ideal beauty in his desire, mingles with it his longing for excellence, fame,
and immortality. Endymion is a young man’s poem about a central experience of young manhood.
Inevitably, it has been compared to Shakespeare’s Venus and Adonis. Endymion lacks the verbal
control and dramatic power of Shakespeare’s poem; but Shakespeare was twenty-eight when he
wrote the poem, and Keats was only twenty-one. The poem was ruthlessly criticised by reviewers.
The chief fault of the poem, Keats himself realised, was the inexperience of life underlying the
original conception. But writing it was a major factor in Keats’s creative
development. Endymion made Keats a poet, whatever Keats made of Endymion.
Several Great Poems in Keats’s Next Publication
The next publication bore the titleLamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other
Poems (1820). Isabella was written in April, 1818, Hyperion in September-December, 1818,
and The Eve of St. Agnes in January, 1819. Isabella is more or less a failure. About this poem we
might say: “It requires more than a willing suspension of disbelief to read. It requires a willing
suspension of intelligence.” The poem is based upon a story from Boccaccio telling of the love of
a damsel for a young man in the service of her merchant-brothers, with its tragic end and pathetic
sequel. Keats amplifies and adorns the original story, enriching it, with tones of sentiment and
colours of romance, and dwelling over every image of beauty or passion. His adornments and
embellishments are, however, not excessive as they were in the case of Endymion. His powers of
imagination and of expression have now gained strength and discipline. His characters make
themselves seen and felt in living shape, action and motive. But the language of Isabella is still
occasionally slipshod.
“The Eve of St. Agnes”, a Series of Gorgeous Pictures
The Eve of St. Agnes is a romantic story based on a medieval superstition. The poem,
however, is less a story than a series of gorgeous pictures, outdoing in splendour even the work of
Spenser in whose stanza it is written. It is chiefly remarkable for its atmosphere, imagery, and
diction. It is also characterised by a complete unity of structure. It has a unique charm which lies
in, apart from its atmosphere, its glow of passionate colour and music, its decorative images
(especially the picture of the triple-arched Gothic window), its ornamental style, and its beautiful
phrases (like “azure-lidded sleep”, “warmed jewels”, “fragrant bodice”). In this poem Keats shows
a marked advance over his previous work. The rhythm is more supple and more subtly related to
syntax and meaning than in Isabella. The high pointof this poem is the celebrated group of

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stanzas describing the events in Madeline’s chamber. Keats shows himself capable of a new
firmness in outline and form, of new flexibility of attitude and expression.
The Two Versions of the Poem “Hyperion”

Of Hyperion (which is a fragment dealing with the Greek myth of the overthrow of the
dynasty of god Saturn), there are two drafts. The first is in majestic blank verse which testifies to
a careful study of Milton. The poem remains unfinished but, in spite of its fragmentary condition,
it is Keats’s most imposing piece of work. According to Keats himself, he gave it up because of the
excessive Miltonism of the style. However, some of the most beautiful images in their delicacy and
precision are utterly unlike Milton’s generalised verbal grandeur, and indeed could be by nobody
but Keats. Here is an example:
No stir of air was there,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
Keats attains great success in conceiving and animating the colossal shapes of the gods. “With a
few slips and inequalities, and one or two instances of verbal incorrectness,Hyperion is indeed
one of the grandest poems in the English language, and in its grandeur seems one of the easiest
and most spontaneous”. The poem contains some admirable poetry and a number of lovely lines,
and its failure is principally due to its conception. Subsequently Keats re-castHyperion into the
shape of a vision, which remains equally unfinished. The imagery and description in this second
version are freed of redundancies, and are far finer for being kept within bounds. There is also an
enormous gain of dignity and force in the presentation of emotion. This second version is, after
the odes, surely Keats’s greatest verse.
The Poem Called “Lamia”
Lamia is in some parts too feverish and in others too unequal. It contains descriptions not
entirely successful as, for instance, that of the palace built by Lamia’s magic. In certain reflective
passages, Keats relapses into his early strain of affected ease and fireside trivialities. Besides, there
is a weakness in the moral of the story:
Do not all charms fly
At the mere touch of cold philosophy?
But Lamia is a more polished poem and more unified in tone than The Eve of St. Agnes. The
description of the death of Lamiais a very controlled, modulated affair. The technical advance
over Endymion is also here noteworthy.
The Incomplete Poem “The Eve of St. Mark”
The Eve of St. Mark is incomplete. But the scene is set consummately, and the atmosphere
is suggested most successfully. The restraint, the balance, the simplicity, the ease are beyond
praise. With rare economy of effort, the poet arrests the reader and makes him feel the impending
tragedy.

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The Ripeness and Maturity of Keats’s Poetic Powers in the Odes

But it is in the odes that we see the ripeness and maturity of Keats’s poetic powers. The
odes not only reveal Keats’s highly thoughtful and intensely reflective nature but also possess
musical effects that are unsurpassed in English lyric poetry. In the odes, Keats gives us most of
his inmost self, and he does so with the sure hand of a great artist. Most of these odes arise from
inner conflicts and have as their theme the contrast between joy and suffering, transience and
permanence, the actual and the ideal. The note of sadness sounds through them all; and the vivid
joy of the perceptive life, the ideal permanence of art, the glamour of romance, the benison of
Nature’s varying moods, are contrasted with the mutability of life and the short duration of
pleasure.
“Ode to a Nightingale”, Voluptuous and Passionate
To a Nightingale is the most voluptuous and passionate in its emotion. But for the most
part the passion, for all its intensity, is focused ‘and controlled as, for instance, in such inspired
felicities as
magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn,
in the lovely image of Ruth
when sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn:
and, above all, in the wistful beauty of the stanza where the poet expresses a desire to “fade far
away dissolve, and quite forget…….”
The Unity of Truth and Beauty
On a Grecian Urn expresses with perfect poetic felicity and insight the vital differences
between life, which pays for its unique prerogative of reality by satiety and decay, and art, which
in forfeiting reality gains in exchange permanence of beauty, and the power to charm by imagined
experience even richer than the real: “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are
sweeter……”and:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare.
The central thought of this ode is the unity of truth and beauty: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.”
The Transitoriness of Beauty and Joy
On Melancholy expresses the transitoriness of beauty and joy, and the idea that true
melancholy lies in the ache at the heart of felicity:
She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die;
And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu……

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An Acceptance of Impermanence
To Autumn is one of the most nearly perfect poems. The different parts of it contribute
directly to the whole, with nothing left dangling or independent. While On Melancholy accepts
the impermanence of beauty and joy as inevitable, To Autumn also accepts impermanence and
accepts it without the least trace of sadness because Keats is able to see it as part of a larger and
richer permanence.
The Odes at the Apex of Keats’s Poetic Achievement
The odes mark the highest development of Keats’s poetic genius and stand at the apex of
his poetic achievement. Here we find a perfect fusion of sobriety with the force of touch and the
wealth of expression. Here we find a rare union of classical discipline with what is greatest in
romanticism. Keats brings here a strong force of selection, order, and harmony to bear on an
unlimited range of intensely felt sensations and emotions.
All the Odes of Keats are closely bound up with the theme of
transience and permanence. Explain, analysing two of the Odes of
Keats, to show how this theme is handled.
The Odes, a Product of Keats’s Inner Conflicts
It would be true to say that the odes of Keats are the product of certain inner struggles or
conflicts. The principal stress in the most important of these odes is a struggle between ideal and
actual. They also imply the opposition between pleasure and pain, imagination and reason,
fullness and privation, permanence and change, Nature and the human, art and life, freedom and
bondage, waking and dream.
The “Ode to a Nightingale”: Keats’s Desire to Escape from Reality

Let us first consider the Ode to a Nightingale. In this poem the draught of vintage
symbolises an imaginative escape from reality. The longing to fade away into the forest dim results
from a desire to avoid another kind of fading away, namely, the melancholy dissolution of change
and physical decay. In the third stanza, the actual world of distress and privation is described. The
actual world, as depicted in this stanza, is the world of weariness, fever, and fret, a world where
palsy shakes a few sad last grey hairs, and where youth, beauty, and love are transient. This picture
of the actual world is in direct opposition to the ecstasy of the nightingale and the golden world of
Flora, “Provencal song”, and the nightingale’s forest as described in the second stanza. Both the
ideal abundance of the second stanza and the privation of the third stanza are vividly depicted.
The poet in this ode affirms the value of the ideal, but he also recognises the power of the actual.
He feels agonised by the inescapable discrepancy between them. He reconciles them by a prior
imaginative acceptance of the unity of experience, by means of which he invests them with a
common extremity and intensity of feeling.
The Mortality of Man, and the Immortality of the Nightingale
The poem also contrasts the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the
nightingale. Of course, Keats here thinks of the race of nightingales, and not the individual

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nightingale, though in the case of mankind he thinks not of the race but of the individual human
being. The bird here represents a universal and undying voice: the voice of Nature, of imaginative
sympathy, and therefore of an ideal romantic poetry, infinitely powerful and profuse. As
sympathy, the voice of the nightingale resolves all differences: it speaks to high and low (emperor
and clown): it comforts the human home-sickness of Ruth and frees her from bitter isolation; and
equally it opens the casements of the remote and magical. The “magic casements” are the climax
of the imaginative experience. In the final stanza, the word “forlorn” is like a bell which tolls the
death of the imagination. The poet realises that fancy cannot cheat so well.
The Human World Versus the World of Nature
This is a poem about man’s world as contrasted, with the world of Nature or death
contrasted with deathlessness. The bird shares in the immortality of Nature which remains,
through all its changes, unwearied and beautiful. The bird is in harmony with its environment,
unlike man who is in competition with his (“No hungry generations tread thee down”); and the
bird cannot conceive of its separation from the world which it expresses and of which’it is a part.
It is in this sense that the nightingale is immortal. Man knows that he is born to die, knows “What
thou among the leaves hast never known”; and this knowledge overshadows man’s life and all his
songs. Such knowledge overshadows this poem and gives it its special poignancy.
The “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: Its Duality of Theme
In the Ode on a Grecian Urn, the duality of the theme is indicated in the very opening
stanza where Keats gives us a contrast between something unchanging (the urn) because it is
dead, and something transient because it is alive. This equipoise is continued in the second stanza,
but the poet continues to toy with his dual matter without asserting or implying that lifeless
permanence is superior or transient reality. Nor does he indicate any preference in the third
stanza, though the emphasis here, as in the second stanza, is upon the warmth and the turbulence
of life. We have not been made to feel that Keats has any distinct preference for an unrealised but
permanent love over an actually experienced but transient but actual passion. In the fourth stanza,
we are carried into a world (the little town) that is permanent, but permanently empty, just as the
figures on the urn are permanent but permanently lifeless. In the final stanza, the poet ends his
dual game. Here he emphatically addresses this thing of beauty as just what it is a Grecian urn.
This work of art, he says, has “teased” us out of thought, that is, out of the actual world into an
ideal world where we can momentarily and imaginatively enjoy the life that is free from the
imperfections of our lot here. But this ideal world is not free of all imperfections: it has very grave
deficiencies because it is lifeless, motionless, cold, unreal (“silent form”, “cold pastoral”, etc).
Keats’s Treatment of Two Kinds of Experience in this Poem

Keeping in mind the duality of the theme in the poem, it is clear that Keats deals with two
kinds of experience: (1) human life in actuality and (2) the appreciation of an imaginary
representation of several human activities (love, music, community life, and religious ritual). The
two kinds of experience are related. Art alone can never satisfy us completely (because the urn is
a “cold pastoral”); it is only an imitation of reality. But this work of art can, tell us something
important about the real or actual experience, the love passion that is fleeting and transient. That
is, the essence of physical love is participation in the life-force and the continuing life-process;
only the individual experience is transient and short-lived. “Beauty is truth”, then, means that

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beauty is total reality properly understood; that is, beauty is the true significance of things in our
world and in the ideal world.
The “Ode on Melancholy”, Also a Poem of Contrasts
The Ode on Melancholy is another poem of contrasts. The general idea of this poem is that
true melancholy is to be found not in the sad and ugly things of life, such as wolf’s-bane,
nightshade, yew-berries, the beetle, and death-moth, but in the beauty and pleasures of the world.
The world’s true sadness dwells with beauty and joy, for the pain of suffering is less acute than the
pain of knowing that beauty and joy will soon fade. The poem expresses Keats’s experience of the
habitual interchange and alteration of the emotions of joy and pain.
The Dwelling-Place of Melancholy
True melancholy, says Keats, lies in the ache at the heart of felicity. It comes to a man
suddenly even as rain may suddenly begin to fall from a cloud above. In that state a man can have
his fill of sorrow by gazing at the beauty of a morning rose or by feeding deep upon the peerless
eyes of one’s mistress when she “some rich anger shows”.
The Transience of Beauty and Joy
The idea of the transitoriness of beauty and joy is vividly conveyed by means of a concrete
picture. Melancholy, we are told, dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die, and Joy whose hand
is ever at his lips bidding adieu. Pleasure, we are told, turns to poison, in the very process of being
enjoyed. True melancholy can be experienced only by him who has a capacity for enjoying the
keenest pleasures. “In the very temple of Delight, veiled Melancholy has her sovereign shrine.”
A Most Explicit Statement in the Final Stanza
Thus this poem too has a dual theme. It shows the inseparability of pain and pleasure, joy
and sorrow, transience and permanence. The poem is about the inter-relations of beauty that
must die, passing joy, aching pleasure. The final stanza is Keats’s most explicit statement about
one of his central themes. A full involvement in joy leads inevitably to intense melancholy, a
melancholy which becomes recurrent and incurable. Also, the intensity of the melancholy lends it
a queer pleasure, because intensity is part of full living.
“Keats as a poet is abundantly and enchantingly sensuous; the

question with some people will be whether he is anything else.”
Discuss.
Keats’s Love of Beauty in Nature, in Woman, in Art
There is no doubt that Keats was a passionate lover of beauty, beauty in all its
forms, shapes, and manifestations. He loved the principle of beauty in all things. Beauty,
indeed, was his polestar, beauty in Nature, in woman, and in art. “A thing of beauty is a
joy for ever”, he writes, and again: “With a great poet the sense of beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates all considerations”.

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The Sensuousness Resulting From His Love of Beauty

It is this love of beauty which introduces the element of sensuousness in his poetry.
His poetry is richly, abundantly, and enchantingly sensuous. This is true especially of his
early poetry till the time of the writing of Hyperion and the great odes, but even the odes
contain ample sensuous imagery. However, it will be wrong to say that Keats is merely
sensuous and nothing more. It would be incorrect to say that he luxuriates in the
expression of sensations only and has no thoughts to express. It would be unfair to say
that his passion for beauty is purely sensuous or sentimental, without an intellectual or
spiritual basis.
Sensuous Imagery in “The Eve of St. Agnes”
Let us first take stock of the sensuous element in some of his major poems. The
Eve of St. Agnes is replete with sensuous pictures. The description of the feast spread by
Porphyro by the side of his sleeping mistress is richly sensuous. Candied apple quince,
plum, jelly, manna, dates, appeal to our senses of taste, smell, and Sight not only by their
own natural richness but the associations of the distant countries from which they come.
The picture of the windowpane with its splendid colours is perfect in its beauty of visual
appeal. Even more sensuous are the pictures of the moonlight falling on Madeline’s fair
breast and on other parts of her glorious body. As Madeline removes the pearls from her
hair, “unclasps the jewels” one by one, and “loosens her bodice”, she looks like “a mermaid
in seaweed”. The stanza in which the poet describes the passionate love-making of
Porphyro and Madeline in the bed-chamber has a richly sensuous appeal. Here
sensuousness takes the form of sensuality which we find in certain other poems also (for
instance, in Endymion, and in the sonnet Bright Star). It is passages like these that gave
rise to the notion of Keats as a poet of sensuous luxury and as a voluptuary of sensation.
Sensuousness in the “Ode to Psyche”
In the Ode to Psyche, we have the picture of Cupid and Psyche lying in an embrace
in deep grass in the midst of flowers of varied colours. Besides this touch of sensuality, we
get one of the most exquisite pictures in the following two lines with their admirable
felicity of word and phrase:
Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian
Sensuous Pictures in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
The sensuous appeal of this ode is one of its principal charms. In the Ode on a
Grecian Urn, we have the sensuous pictures of passionate men and gods chasing
maidens, flute-players playing ecstatic music, a handsome young man advancing to kiss
his beloved, and so on. The ecstasy of the sensations of youthful love is depicted in the
following lines:

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More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoyed
For ever panting and for ever young.
Sensuous Pictures in the Other Odes
The Ode to a Nightingale contains lines expressing an intense desire for a red
wine, lines containing a magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky with the stars
around her, and lines offering a rich feast of flowers:
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.
In the Ode on Melancholy, we have a delightfully sensuous picture of the mistress
showing “some rich anger” and raving, while the lover holds her hand in his tight grip and
feeds deep upon her peerless eyes. The Ode to Autumn, makes our mouths water with its
delicious fruits in the first stanza.
The Intellectual Side of Keats’s Aestheticism
Critics and readers have, however, not been slow to recognise the substantiality
and the depth of the major poems of Keats. Cazamian has pointed out mat the
aestheticism of Keats has also an intellectual side. No one has ever reaped such a rich
harvest of thoughts out of the suggestions which life had to offer. Through reading and a
thirst for knowledge, Keats became acquinted with Greece, paganism, and ancient art. He
read the writers of the Renaissance, loved and cultivated Spenser, Chapman, Fletcher,
and Milton. His letters show how closely the cult of Shakespeare was interwoven with his
thinking. From all these element Keats built for himself a personal store of reflections and
ideas. Keats’s love of beauty is sensuous but it is also idealistic and spiritual. Even
inEndymion, there is a nc4e of mysticism, a sustained allegory; some of its passages have
an obvious symbolic meaning. Endymion’s union with Cynthia represents the poet’s
attainment of the goal of ideal beauty. Furthermore, Keats did not try to create a paradise
of art and beauty divorced from the cares and interests of the world. His conception of
poetry covered the whole range of life and imagination.
The Human Appeal of “The Eve of St Agnes”
The Eve of St. Agnes, famous chiefly for its aesthetic qualities, is not without its
human appeal. The figure of the ancient Beadsman is finely touched. The old nurse
Angela, a “poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing”, is still more successfully drawn.
Her debate with Porphyro in her little room is admirably conveyed to us. Madeline, too,
is realistically, though briefly, drawn whether in her meeting with the nurse on the
staircase or when she closes her chamber-door, “panting” with the candle gone out, or
when she wakes up to find her lover beside her.

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The Intellectual Aspect of “Hyperion”

Hyperion was intended to be a poem of evolution. It aimed at expressing the
valuable and incontrovertible idea that lower forms of life are superseded by higher ones.
The subject of this poem is the dethronement of an older and ruder worship by one more
advanced and humane, in which ideas of ethics and of arts hold a larger place beside ideas
of Nature and her brute powers. In the revised version of this poem, there are lines which
show Keats’s realisation that poetry must have a realistic and social context:
Almost from the beginning, Keats had looked beyond the mere sweets of poetry towards
a nobler life
Of human hearts.
The Kernel of Keats’s Thinking in the Great Odes of Keats
The great odes contain the kernel of Keats’s thinking. These odes clearly show that
if there is in his work a pre-occupation with sensuous beauty, there is also a preoccupation
with stark reality. In fact, the greatest of these odes represent the conflict that was, always
going on in Keats between the world of beauty and the world of realty. If he tries to escape
into the world of beauty and reality, it is only to realise that the claims of real life are so
strong, as to hinder the escape. In the Ode to a Nightingale, the poet is keenly aware of
“the weariness, the fever, and the fret” or real life where youth, hearty, and love are short-
lived. In the Ode on a Grecian Urn, the poet cannot ignore the warmth, passion, vigour,
and the turbulence of real life as compared with the artistic carvings on the urn. The
superiority of art over real life is therefore questionable. The conclusion of the poet is that
“beauty is truth, truth beauty”. In other words, beauty lies in the real world of men, not
merely in art or in the fairyland of fancy. (Of course there are also other interpretations
of this famous line.) In the Ode on Melancholy, the theme of transiency and permanence
and the poet’s conflicting attitudes are open and central. True melancholy, says the poet,
can be tasted only by him who has a capacity for experiencing the keenest pleasures. Like
the rest of Keats’s odes, this poem is tragic: ‘True melancholy is the ache at the heart of
felicity”. In the Ode to Autumn, Keats again accepts impermanence, but here he does so
without any sadness. Death is recognised in the final stanza of this poem as something
inherent in the course of things, the condition and price of all fulfilment.
A Combination of the Aesthetic and the Intellectual Sides
A critic has neatly summed up Keats’s poetic achievement. This summing up takes
note of both the aesthetic and the intellectual aspects of his poetry. Says this critic:
“Keats’s Shakespearean or, humanitarian ambitions, his critical and self-critical insights,
his acute awareness of the conditions enveloping the modern poet, his struggles toward a

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vision that would comprehend all experience, joy and suffering, the natural and the ideal,
the transient and the eternal—all this made him capable of greater poetry than he actually
wrote, and makes him, more than his fellow romantics, our contemporary. Though his
poetry in general was is some measure limited and even weakened by the romantic
preoccupation with beauty, his finest writing is not merely beautiful, because he had seen
the boredom and the horror as well as the glory.”
“The Odes of Keats reflect his persistent endeavour for something

beautiful and permanent in a transient world.” Discuss and Illustrate.
Keats’s Inner Conflicts Expressed in His Odes
The Odes of Keats deal basically with some of the conflicts that troubled Keats. These
conflicts give to his odes a dramatic quality. The principal conflict, of course, is between the real
world and the ideal world. Keats is always trying to escape to the world of imagination, the world
of beauty, the world of perfection, such as, the world of the nightingale or the Grecian urn. But his
escape is always obstructed or thwarted by a painful realisation of the actualities of life. Almost
each of the great odes of Keats reveals this conflict in one form or the other.
Keats’s Glorification of the Imagination in the “Ode to Psyche”

The Ode to Psyche may be considered first. Psyche symbolises for Keats the soul in the old
sense of the word: the sum-total of human consciousness. For Keats a most important ingredient
of that consciousness was the imagination. In promising to worship Psyche, he was announcing
his intention of glorifying the imagination but at the same time his intention of becoming a
psychological poet and of analysing the human mind in order to show how an awareness of its
complexity could enrich human experience. Keats chose Psyche as his object of worship, because
for him the best means of approaching the immortal world was through the use of the most active
component of the human soul, namely, the imagination. A man might still employ the imagination
to break through the bonds of the mortal and the finite. Psyche was an excellent symbol for the
imagination as an instrument to bridge the gap between the mortal and the immortal because she
stood between both: she had been a mortal and she then became a goddess. Thus there is a duality
in Keats’s very concept of Psyche. In the last stanza, the poet declares that the paradise for the
soul is to be built by the imagination within the poet’s own consciousness. The temple to Psyche
will be built in “some untrodden region” of Keats’s mind. To build Psyche’s temple is to widen the
consciousness. But the increase in consciousness carries with it the dual capacity for pleasure and
for pain.
The Central Idea of the “Ode to a Nightingale”
The Ode to a Nightingale has as one of its central ideas, the contrast between the
happiness and immortality of the bird and the misery and mortality of human life. Through wine
or through the exercise of his imagination, the poet would like to escape from the world of reality.
He would like to “fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget the weariness, the fever, and the fret”.
He would like to leave this world “where men sit and hear each other groan”, “where palsy shakes
a few, sad, last gray hair”, “where youth grows pale, spectre-thin, and dies”, where beauty and love

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are fleeting and transient, and “where but to think is to be full of sorrow”. Accordingly, the poet is
carried into the forest on the wings of Poesy and in the midst of the flowers and under the moon
he listens to the nightingale’s song and thinks of the bird’s immortality:
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down.
The use of the word “forlorn”, however, summons him back from the world of beauty and romance
to the everyday world. The poet discovers that his imagination cannot provide him with a lasting
escape from the actual world. The conflict introduces several tensions in the poem, making it
highly dramatic. The desire to escape to a world of eternal beauty and joy ends in failure.
The Idea of the Immortality of Art in the “Grecian Urn”
The Ode on a Grecian Urn also begins with a symbol, in this case an inanimate object,
namely the urn which-has survived through many centuries and which therefore represents the
immortality of art. On the urn are depicted young people in a moment of sensuous ecstasy, men
pursuing women amid the music of pipes and timbrels; and there is the repeated question: Are
they deities or mortals, men or gods? But the question shifts to the central contrast between the
unending happiness arrested in art and the brevity of happiness in mortal life. This contrast is
developed in the second and third stanzas. To the crowded scene of amorous pursuit (in the first
stanza), is now added the piper beneath the trees, and in both stanzas the happiness of the piper
and the leafy trees is perfect: the piper on the urn will pipe songs for ever new without feeling
tired, and the trees on the urn will never shed their leaves. But the theme of love brings in
frustration and negation. The poet thinks first of the perpetual non-fulfilment of love on the urn:
“Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss”, although there is the consolation that the beloved
cannot fade and that he will love her always: “For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair”. Love
depicted on the urn has an ideal quality: it has all the joy and none of the suffering that goes with
actual human passion and satiety. Thus the first three stanzas interpret the scenes on the urn in
terms of the contrast between its happy and permanent world and the human world of mortality,
change, and suffering. But the poet finds refuge in the world of beauty and imagination (as
represented by the urn) only temporarily. In the fourth stanza, he realises that the little town
depicted on the urn will always remain empty and silent. Thus the eternity of joy and beauty (of
the town on the urn) becomes an eternity of silence and desolation. The illusion created by the
imagination fails, as it fails, in the Ode to a Nightingale. The message of the final stanza is that
beauty is the criterion and proof of truth and that truth is the criterion and proof of beauty.
(‘Truth” should here be interpreted as “reality”). Thus Keats, after escaping into the world of
beauty and permanence, finds himself compelled to return to the real world of impermanence and
suffering and to reach the conclusion that true beauty consists not in an escape from this world
but in an acceptance of it. This ode certainly celebrates the immortal beauty of art as contrasted
with the fleeting human life and love. But the poet cannot forget that a flesh-and-blood
experience, with all its pains, is more satisfying than the cold, remote perfection of the marble
urn.

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The World of Realities as Depicted in the “Ode on Melancholy”

The Ode on Melancholy is not a poem of escape. Here the poet concentrates on the world
of realities. The poem offers a paradox. True melancholy, we are told, is to be found in everything
that is beautiful and joyful:
She dwells with Beauty, Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu.
But the paradox is easily resolved. True melancholy lives with beauty and joy, because in the very
act of our apprehending beauty and joy, we realise that both beauty and joy are short-lived, and
because such a realisation produces the truest sadness in our hearts. The poem thus expresses
Keats’s experience of the habitual interchange and alternation of the emotions of joy and pain. In
this poem Keats is unable to escape into any ideal world. The haunting thought of the
transitoriness of beauty and joy makes any flight to remote ideal world impossible.
No Escape from Reality Even in the “Ode to Autumn”
To Autumn may at first seem a poem of untroubled serenity. It seems to be an
unquestioning surrender to sensuous luxury. But that is not so. The first two stanzas build up, or
seem to build up, a wholly happy picture of warmth and bursting ripeness in everything, of vines
and trees and fruits and nuts and bees. But there is, even in these stanzas, the overshadowing fact
of impermanence. The summer has done its work and is departing; and if autumn comes, winter
cannot be far behind. Indeed, we cannot escape the melancholy implications of exuberant
ripeness. In the final stanza, the poet describes the music of autumn against the songs of spring
and we have, though in a subdued form, the return from vision to actuality. (It is the kind of return
which we find in the concluding stanza of the Nightingale ode.) Whereas in the first stanza fruits
as well as bees seemed almost conscious of fulfilment, in the last stanza every item carries an
elegiac note. In To Autumn, Keats does not evade or challenge actuality; he achieves the power to
see and accept life as it is, a perpetual process of ripening, decay, and death.
Q.5. What are the qualities of Keats’s poetry that account for
its continued appeal to the modern reader?
The Essential Keats
The story of Keats is the story of a poet’s rise from the status of a very minor writer, in
orthodox circles, a despised minor writer, to a major rank. It did seem at first as if Keats’s name
had been “writ in water”. One reason for this was that his best poetry required more sophisticated
taste and insight than most early readers possessed. Roughly, it may be said that, during the first
decades after 1821, his general reputation grew very slowly, but that it did grow. But Milnes’s Life
Letters and Literary Remains (1848) changed the climate, though even Milnes said that Keats
would never be a popular poet, because he could be enjoyed only by the few who possessed the
poetic faculty. Milnes’s biography of Keats expressly rejected the common image of Keats as a
sensuous or sensual weakling who was killed by hostile reviews. This biography did much to
establish Keats’s real character and literary stature. Matthew Arnold, in an essay (1880), strongly
emphasised Keats’s strength of character, the “flint and iron” in him, as well as his Shakespearean
gift of “natural magic” and “rounded perfection and felicity of loneliness”. Arnold also wrote that,
although Keats was not ripe for Shakespeare’s “faculty of moral interpretation”, his passion for

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beauty was not that of “the sensuous or sentimental poet” but that it was “an intellectual and
spiritual passion”.
Keats’s Poetry, Not Divorced from the Cares of Life
It is this picture of Keats, as defined by Matthew Arnold, that appeals to the modern mind.
Cazamian, for instance, has pointed out that the “aestheticism” of Keats has also an ‘intellectual’
side. No one has ever reaped such a rich harvest of thoughts out of the suggestions which life had
to offer. Keats’s letters show how closely the cult of Shakespeare was interwoven with his thinking.
From various sources, besides that of life, Keats had built for himself a personal store of reflections
and ideas. It was not Keats’s aim, says Sidney Colvin, merely to create a paradise of an and beauty
divorced from the cares and interests of the world. His conception of poetry covered the whole
range of life and imagination. It is true that, because he did not live long enough, he was not able
fully to illustrate the vast range of his conception of poetry. But his best work has the stamp of
poetic greatness. In the modern age the view of Keats as wholly or mainly a poet of the senses has
had few champions (H.W. Garrod being one). The modern view of Keats is overwhelmingly that
of a poet of philosophic reach and depth. (It is a view to which his letters have also contributed
much.) This view was first fully expounded in C.D. Thorpe’s book, The Mind of John Keats (1926),
and supported by the successive writings of John Middleton Murry. During the last fifty years, the
scope and seriousness, the dimensions and tensions of Keats’s mind and major poems have
thoroughly been appreciated. Indeed, the temptation of the modern critic has been to confuse the
actual performance of Keats with what he was potentially capable of. It would not be unfair to say
that Keats’s chief poems and letters have been assimilated by all serious modern poets. (One
eloquent testimony is the final discourse in Archibald MacLeish’s Poetry and Experience, 1961).
His influence may be traced by conventional literary techniques through a line of poets, from G.M.
Hopkins through W.B. Yeats and T.S. Eliot to the American, Wallace Stevens, much of whose fine
poetry seems like an attempt to develop some of Keats’s intentions, moral, and poetic, to their
further limits.
The First Truly Modern Poet, Besides Wordsworth
Shakespeare’s name occurs time and again in talk about Keats. Of course, Keats is not as
great as Shakespeare, nor as great as many other English poets. But he has, to a remarkable
degree, that same power of self-absorption, that wonderful sympathy and identification with all
things, that “Negative Capability” which he saw as essential to the creation of great poetry and
which Shakespeare possessed so abundantly. Keats’s tremendous value for literary and moral
experience in the modern time is the example he sets, the allegory he is. Here, he says to us, is a
way of learning to face life, and to create art. In this brave attitude, he is with Wordsworth the first
truly modern poet.
The Core of Keats’s Work and its Intellectual Appeal
The portion of Keats’s work that has its appeal and value for modern readers consists of
the original version of Hyperion, La Belle Dame Sans Merci, some of the sonnets and, above all,
the odes. Here we find no superfluities, no surplus age, no decorativeness for its own sake, no
swooning sensuousness or sensuality. This work is characterised by a perfect fusion of sobriety
with the force of touch and the wealth of expression. Here we find a rare union of classical
discipline, guided by the example of the ancients, with the more precious matter which Keats
found in romanticism. Keats brings here a strong force of selection, order, and harmony to bear

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on an unlimited range of intensely felt sensations and emotions. And this accounts for the appeal
of this body of work for our times.
The Symbolic Elements in Keats’s Poetry

Symbolism has been much valued in the modern age. There is symbolism in much of
Keats’s poetry. Even Endymion has an allegorical and mystical significance.
Hyperion symbolically conveys to us the idea of evolutionary development, the supersession of
what has become obsolete and useless by new knowledge and new modes of life. The nightingale
and the Grecian urn serve as valuable symbols for Keats. La Belle Dame Sans Merci, a
masterpiece of sheer “magic” and a precious poem by virtue of that alone, is also capable of an
allegorical interpretation.
Shakespearean Heights Touched by Keats in His Odes
But it, is the Odes which mark the highest development of Keats’s poetic genius and give
promise of the Shakespearean heights that might have been achieved by our poet had he lived
longer.
A Central Theme of Modern Poetry, Also the Basic Themes of Keats’s Odes
The basic theme of the great Odes of Keats is a central theme of modern poetry. This theme
is the tension between our painful sense of transience and our intuitions of the eternal, or the
relationship between the pain of life and the delight of poetry, or the relationship between life, art
and death. Yeats’s Sailing to Byzantium andByzatJium, for instance, can be read as modern
variations on the themes of Keats’s odes and, though these poems by Yeats are great, they are not
greater than Keats’s odes. The odes are also modern, as has already been said above, in being
symbolic poems: they show, rather than say. They are modern in finding “objective correlatives”
for intimate and painful states of personal feeling. We get away in them from the too “personal
touch”, that faintly cloying note which flaws so much of Keats’s other work.
The Construction and Structure of Keats’s Odes
The Odes of Keats are constructed with harmonious skill. They deal with the favourite
themes in Keats’s romanticism—the artistic quality of a Greek urn which gives us the message that
beauty and truth are one, the charming myths of Hellas (Ode to Psyche), the painful craving of
the soul to find a beauty which endures and the fascination of death (Ode To a Nightingale),the
changing seasons and the joys of the earth (To Autumn). The language in these poems sparkles
with all the gems of speech, without their brilliance predominating over the conciseness and
exactness of the whole. The rhythms are perfectly adapted to the supreme unity of impression.
That exactly is the taste of the modern literary reader who demands an intellectual discipline but
is not averse to a highly imaginative handling of a theme or an emotional treatment of it.
The Notable Sonnets of Keats
Among the sonnets the most notable are On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer, When
I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be,and Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art. The
first of these is an expression of the ecstatic joy and wonder at the opening out of a new, rich world
of beauty and poetic experience of Keats.

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A Critic’s View of Keats’s Modernity

Douglas Bush looks upon Keats as almost a contemporary poet. Keats’s Shakespearean or
humanitarian ambition, his critical and self-critical insights, his acute awareness of the conditions
enveloping the modern poet, his struggles toward a vision that would comprehend all experience
(joy and suffering, the natural and the ideal, the transient and the eternal)—these are the factors
which make Keats more a poet of our times than a poet of his own age. His romantic preoccupation
with beauty did somewhat limit and weaken his poetry, but his finest writing is not merely
beautiful. His finest work is solid and weighty and significant because he had seen not only the
glory of his universe but also “the boredom and the horror” of human life.
Another Critic’s View
We might conclude by quoting the opinion of another critic (Bernard Blackstone): “No
other verse, outside Shakespeare and Blake, rewards minute scrutiny as Keats’s. Its texture is truly
organic, we can put it under the microscope, and it doesn’t degenerate into a blur of dots like a
photographic reproduction, it opens out into new patterns like a piece of living tissue. It is full
poetry.” This richness, this complexity and depth, this “ore” cannot fail to appeal to the thoughtful
modern reader.
Show that the great Odes of Keats are a sequence showing an

interrelationship of mood and subject.
The Chronology of Keats’s Odes
It is generally believed that the Ode on Indolence was chronologically the first among the
great Odes of Keats. The germ of this ode is to be found in one of his letters that he had written a
month or two earlier, a letter in which he had said that neither Poetry nor Ambition nor Love had
much meaning for him, thus giving expression to the mood which forms the basis of the Ode on
Indolence. Keats excluded this ode from the 1820 volume perhaps because it is less highly
wrought than the others. This ode combines a praise of indolence with a rejection of Poetry,
Ambition, and Love though this rejection is expressed satirically:
For I would not be dieted with praise,

A pet-lamb in a sentimental farce.
Several turns of phrase or thought in this ode re-appear in the others. Of these, the drowsy
indolence is one; so is the idea that ambition is worthless. The indolent mood which is the source
of this poem and which somehow mingles sleeping and waking, is not lethary but in some sense a
visionary state. On Indolence seems at first to reject poetry, but it is really a poem about the mood
from which Keats’s poetry at that time sprang. In the weeks before the writing of the odes, Keats
was gradually realising the creative function of indolence. He was anxious to achieve a state of
non-attachment, and he was filled with a desire to find a meaning in human suffering so that not
only his own but other people’s suffering could in some way be justified. He was torn between his
continuing passion for Fancy Brawne and a wish to escape from the nets of ambition and love.

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The Similarities Between Some of the Odes

The Ode to Psyche clarifies the situation. Keats’s mood here is much like the mood of On
Indolence: “Surely I dreamttoday…..” Here is the same inertia and oblivion, and a mixture of
sleeping and waking. When he finds Cupid and Psyche in “soft-handed slumber” together, it is
almost like his own condition in On Indolence; and the interaction between Keats’s own
emotions, and the emotions of the subject he is dealing with, will prove later to be an important
aspect of the Ode to a Nightingale.As the poem proceeds, drowsy numbness is raised to a higher
power of itself: “I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspired”. Keats desires to serve Psyche in a mood
whose expression is more complex, more impassioned, and indeed more intellectual, than
anything in the Ode on Indolence. His mood tends towards activity; is a balanced tension of
excitement; and here it has something of an intellectual insight, a fuller understanding. The stress
falls largely on the melancholic aspects of Psyche, the love-goddess. (She is called “mournful
Psyche” in the Ode on Melancholy.)
The Nightingale Ode, an Expression of a Series of Moods
The Ode to a Nightingale begins with a description of the poet falling into a drugged sleep,
and then the poet feeling too happy in the happiness of the bird. This paradox is resolved in the
sixth stanza in which Keats tells us that he has often been “half in love with easeful death” and
that in listening to the nightingale “more than ever seems it rich to die”. (In the third stanza,
Keats’s account of the miseries of life is coloured by thoughts of the death of his brother Tom.)
Keats dreams of escaping from the miseries of the world, first by drinking wine, and then on the
wings of Poesy. He would like to leave the world unseen, and even in the richly sensuous
description of the surrounding darkness we are reminded again of death in the phrase
“embalmed darkness”. It is no use complaining about the so-called illogicality of Keats’s
pretending that he is listening to the same bird as the one that sang to Ruth. Symbolically
interpreted the song of the tyrd is the song’ of the poet. Keats is contrasting the immortality of
poetry ‘with the mortality of the poet. This is the climax of the poem and the point where the
different themes are harmonised—the beauty of the nightingale’s song, the loveliness of the Spring
night, the miseries of the world, and the desire to escape from those miseries by wine, or by poetry,
or by death. The nightingale’s song acquires a greater poignancy from the miseries of the world.
This ode is not the expression of a single mood, but of a series of moods. From being too happy in
the happiness of the bird’s song, Keats becomes aware of the contrast between the bird’s joy and
the misery of human life, from the thought of which he can only momentarily escape by wine, by
poetry, by the beauty of Nature, or by the thought of death. In the seventh stanza, the contrast is
sharpened: the immortal bird, representing natural beauty as well as poetry, is set against the
“hungry generations” of mankind. The contrast is followed by the poet’s going back to history and
legend, to Ruth in tears, and the “magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas”. But the
“faery lands” are “forlorn”. Reality now breaks in on the poetic dream and tolls the poet back to
his self. Fancy, the Muse of escapist poetry, is “deceiving elf. Keats expresses with a maximum of
intensity the desire to escape from reality and yet he recognises that no escape is possible.
The Close Connection Between the Nightingale and the Grecian Urn Odes
In the Ode to a Nightingale, we are left thinking that neither beauty of Nature (the
nightingale’s song) nor the beauty of art (the flights of Poesy) can console us for the miseries of
life. In the Ode on a Grecian Urn, Keats makes another effort in the same direction. The life of
the figures depicted on the urn possesses the beauty, the significance, and the externality of art;
and this is contrasted (some times implicitly and sometimes explicitly) with the transitoriness,
the meaninglessness, and the unpoetic nature of actual life. The “unwearied” melodist “for ever

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piping songs, for ever new”, and the uncloying love of the imaginary world of the artist are
contrasted with the inevitable imperfections of human existence. In the last stanza, Keats
proclaims that the sorrows and the meaninglessness of life can be transcended if we learn the
lesson that “beauty is truth, truth beauty”. The poet recognises the proposition that beauty is an
image of truth and that, therefore, if we see life steadily and see it whole, the disagreeable of life
will evaporate as they do in a great work of art. Thus art points to the fact that life can be as
meaningful as art. Keats is fully aware of the limitation of art. Even when he is congratulating the
lover on the permanence of his unsatisfied love, he hankers after “breathing human passion”.
When he is describing the scene of sacrifice which will remain for ever beautiful, he thinks of the
desolate town, emptied for ever of its inhabitants. Art is invaded by human suffering. The “cold
pastoral”, although perfect, is lacking in the warmth of reality.
The Link Between the Melancholy Ode and Several Other Odes
The Ode on Melancholy has links with several of the other odes. The song of the
nightingale had made the poet too happy, his heart aching, and his senses pained by a “drowsy
numbness”. There is a strain of melancholy in the scene of desolation in theOde on a Grecian
Urn. Now in the Ode on Melancholy, Keats introduces “Lethe”, “nightshade” and “Yew” but
rejects them as being unsuitable means of arousing melancholy. These, and even the “beetle”,
“death-moth”, and the “owl” are all to be avoided because they drown “the wakeful anguish of the
soul” and prevent us from experiencing to the full the subtler melancholy of which Keats is writing.
Melancholy is to be sought in beauty and joy—in a rose, a rainbow, or the anger of a beloved.
Because beauty is transient, because love and joy fade, the enjoyment of them must be
accompanied with melancholy. Beauty is lovely because it dies and impermanence is the essence
of joy; so that only those who are exquisitely sensuous and able to relish the finest joys can taste
true sadness. Keats is here writing really about the poetical character. The fine sensitivity
necessary for the writing of poetry makes the poet susceptible both to joy and sorrow. The
realisation that love and beauty are short-lived intensifies his joy in them. In fact, the relationship
between beauty and melancholy works both ways. That is, either joy or sadness is most intensely
felt when it is attended by a consciousness of the experience which is opposite and yet so closely
related to it. The theme is thus more complex and subtle than the aspect of it which appears on
the surface in this poem.
The Mood in the Ode to Autumn, Related to the Mood in Other Odes
To Autumn opens with a description of the sensuous abundance of the season—fruits,
flowers, bees, etc. But in the final lines of the opening stanza, slight implications about the passage
of time begin to operate. The flowers are called “later”; the bees are imagined as thinking that
warm days will never cease; and there is a reference to the summer which has already passed. In
the second stanza, we get a personification of the season in several appropriate postures and
settings. The whole stanza presents the paradoxical qualities of autumn, its aspects both of
lingering and passing. This is specially true of the last two lines in the stanza where we see autumn
as the season of dying as well as of fulfilling. It is with a patten; look that Autumn watches the last
oozings hours by hours. Oozing, or a steady dripping, is of course, well-known as a symbol of the
passage of time. But it is in the last stanza that the theme emerges in a most striking manner:
“Where are the songs of Spring?” This opening question implies that the season of youth and re-
birth, with its beauties of sight and sound, has passed, and that the season of autumn is passing.
The earlier imagery (of the first stanza) is that of ripeness which means ageing and ending as well
as ripening. The final imagery is more truly autumnal. The music of autumn is “wailful” and
“mournful”. Also, we have in the last stanza the “soft-dying day” after the passing of “hours and

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hours” (of the second stanza); the imagery is that of sunset and deepening twilight when the
clouds impact their glow to the day and the plains. Thus the poem’s latent theme of transitoriness
and mortality is symbolically dramatised by the passing course of the day. (The opening stanza
suggested the height of day when the sun was strong.) All these characteristics of the poem are to
be found in its final image: “And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.” Birds habitually gather
in flocks toward nightfall. This means that the day is coming to a close. Also, birds gather
particularly when they are preparing to fly southwards at the approach of winter. This means that
the season too is drawing to a close. A feeling of melancholy is inevitable because of these
suggestions. Thus the theme and mood of the Ode to Autumn are connected with the theme and
mood of the preceding odes, though the connection may not seem to be very intimate.
“Hyperion, A Fragment”: An Introduction

Date of Composition
Hyperion was begun by Keats beside his brother’s sickbed in September or October, 1818.
It is to Hyperion that he refers when he speaks in those days of “plunging into abstract images”,
and finding a “feverous relief” in the “abstractions” of poetry. These phrases are applicable only
toHyperion. It was finished some time in April, 1819.
Keats’s Original Plan About This Poem

The subject of Hyperion had long been in Keats’s mind, and both in the text and the
preface of Endymion he indicated his intention to attempt it. At first he thought of the poem to be
written as a “romance”, but his plan changed to that of a blank verse epic in ten or twelve books.
His purpose was to describe the warfare of the earlier Titanic dynasty with the later Olympian
dynasty of the Greek gods; and in particular one episode of that warfare, the dethronement of the
sun-god Hyperion and the assumption of his kingdom by Apollo. Hyperion exists in two versions,
both incomplete. The second version was a revision of the first, with the addition of a long
induction in a new style which makes it into a different poem. The two versions of the poem extend
over Keats’s greatest creative period. The first version was written mostly before the great Odes,
the second mostly after them. As a matter of fact, the period covered by Hyperion is the period of
Keats’s most intense experience, both of joy and sorrow, in actual life, and of his most rapid
development.
The Dethronement of Hyperion, the Proposed Theme
The theme of the war between the Titans or the earlier generation of gods, and the later
Olympians who overthrew them often occurs in the literature which Keats was fond of reading.
The specific theme, the dethronement of Hyperion, the old sun-god, by Apollo the new, is Keats’s
own. Apollo is also the god of poetry, and as Endymion had symbolised the fate of the lover of
beauty in the world, so the story of Apollo and Hyperion was perhaps going to symbolise the fate
of the poet as creator. Since the poem is unfinished, we cannot know.
The Miltonic Influence
The design of Hyperion owes much to Milton. The poem opens in the regular epic manner,
in the middle of the story. The Titans, like Milton’s fallen angels, are already outcasts and have

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lost their power. Hyperion alone is not yet overthrown, and, like Milton’s Satan, he is the one hope
of further existence. The opening scene is followed by a council to discuss the regaining of the lost
dominion, in which Enceladus, like Moloch,[1] pronounces his sentence for open war, and
Oceanus, like Belial,[2] stands for more moderate measures. Externally, at least, this is modelled
on Paradise Lost, and marks a clear break with the loose and incoherent struc-ure of Endymion.
Keatsian Originality of Style Despite the Debt to Milton
In spite of its fragmentary condition,Hyperion remains Keats’s most imposing piece of
work. According to the publishers, ‘the hostile reception given to Endymiondiscouraged Keats
from continuing with the poem. Keats himself said that he gave it up because of the excessive
Miltonism of the style. “There were too many Miltonic inversions in it”, he wrote to Reynolds.
“Miltonic verse cannot be written but in an artful or rather in an artist’s humour.” The Miltonic
influence is certainly obvious in the verse and diction of the first Hyperion as it is in the design.
There is, for instance, a constant use of inversions (“stride colossal”, “rest divine”) typical
of Milton’s Latinized style. Especially noticeable is the trick of sandwiching a noun between two
adjectives (“gold clouds metropolitan”). There are other fragmsnts of classical sentence-structure
too:
save what solemn tubes,
Blown by the serious Zephyrs, gave of sweet
And wandering sounds, slow-breathed melodies.
But the poem is hardly Miltonic in any stricter sense. In the matter of rhythm, Keats’s blank verse
has not the flight ofMilton’s. “Its periods do not wheel through such stately evolutions to so
solemn and far-foreseen close; though it indeed lacks neither power nor music.” It is still the verse
of Keats, but immensely purged and strengthened by contact with a severer master. Some of the
most beautiful images in their delicacy and precision are utterly unlike Milton’s generalised verbal
grandeur, and indeed could be by nobody but Keats:
. . . .No stir of air was there
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. (1, 7-10)
Books I and II. The Speeches of Oceanus and Clyniene
The first book of Hyperion gives us a picture of the fallen Titans, with Saturn as the central
figure, but Hyperion as the only one who remains even potentially active. The second book shows
them in council and the vital part of it is undoubtedly the speech of Oceanus. The sum and
substance of his speech is as follows:
My voice is not a bellows unto ire.
Yet listen, ye who will, whilst I bring proof
How ye, perforce, must be content to stoop:
And in this proof much comfort will I give,
If ye will take that comfort in its truth.

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Of thunder, or of Jove. (11,176-82)

Saturn was not the first power in the universe, and should not expect to be the last. Chaos and
darkness produced light; light brought heaven and earth and life itself into existence; and the
Titans were the first-born of life. Just as heaven and earth are more beautiful than chaos and
darkness,
And fated to excel us. … (11, 212-15)
The Titans should not grieve over the situation and should not envy their successors
. . . .for ‘tis the eternal law,
That first in beauty shall be first in might. (11, 228-29)
The simple Clyniene follows and supports Oceanus by bearing testimony to the beauty of young
Apollo’s music which she has heard. The lesson of all this is that Hyperion is to be a poem of
evolution, of the super-session of lower forms by higher; and that the successors are to prevail
because they are superior in beauty.
Apollo, the Subject of Book III
In the fragment of the third book the interest shifts from the Titans to the young Apollo.
Mnemosyne (Memory) alone among the Titans has formed relations with the younger gods. She
has watched over the childhood of Apollo, and now she finds him wavering and uncertain of his
course. In his talk with her he finds the consciousness of his destiny and assumes his new-found
godhead. At this point the poem breaks off.
Reasons Why the Poem Could not be Completed
It seems that what began as an epic poem about a mythological conflict has become a
symbolical poem of a different kind. But in the process new difficulties have arisen for the poet.
The conventional epic conflict would have afforded a wealth of scenes and incidents. The new
scheme, of an evolution in beauty, presents far greater problems. It could hardly be put forth in
events and actions, and would not therefore afford material for the ten books originally proposed.
Perhaps there were other difficulties as well. The poem remains unfinished because Keats did not
know how it was to go on.
Treatment of Greek Things, But Not in a Greek Manner
Although Keats has been called a Greek, he does not write of Greek things in a Greek
manner. The very description of thepalace of Hyperion, with its vague, far-dazzling pomps and
phantom terrors of coming doom, shows that. Keats is here far in workmanship from the Greek
purity and precision of outline, and from definition of individual images. Some of his pictures of
Nature, too, show not the simplicity of the Greek, but the complexity of the modern, sentiment of
Nature. But Keats shows a thorough grasp of the essential meaning of the war between Titans and
Olympians. He illustrates with great beauty and force (in the speech of Oceanus in the second
book) that essential meaning : the dethronement of an older and ruder worship by one more
advanced and humane, in which ideas of ethics and of arts held a larger place beside ideas of
Nature and her brute powers.

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Keats’s Success in Animating the Colossal Gods

Again, Keats attains great success in conceiving and animating the colossal shapes of the
early gods. He shows a masterly instinct in the choice of comparisons, drawn from Nature by
which he tries to make us realise the voices of those gods, with their personalities between the
elemental and the human.
A Dramatic Representation of Human Emotions
Indeed, Hyperion is Keats’s most serious and considerable attempt at the dramatic
presentation of emotion, because the Titans are conceived in human terms, and their sorrows are
human sorrows. There is far greater power, too, of discourse, of argument in verse, than ever
before; there is no parallel in Keats’s earlier work to the speech of Oceanus.
Sublimity of Book I, and Intensity of Book III
The second book of Hyperion, relating the council of the dethroned Titans, has neither the
sublimity of the first, nor the intensity of the unfinished third. In the first book we have a solemn
vision of the fallen Saturn, followed by a resplendent vision of Hyperion threatened in his empire.
In the third book we see Apollo undergoing a convulsive change under the afflatus of Mnemosyne,
and about to put on the full powers of his godhead. But the third book has a ripeness and
controlled power of its own which places it quite on a level with the other two.
One of the Grandest English Poems
“With a few slips and inequalities, and one or two instances of verbal incorrectness,
Hyperion is indeed one of the grandest poems in the English language, and in its grandeur seems
one of the easiest and most spontaneous. Keats, however, had never been able to apply himself to
it continuously, but only by fits and starts. Partly this was due to the distractions of bereavement,
of material anxiety, and of dawning passion amid which it was begun and continued: partly (if we
may trust the statement of the publishers) to disappointment at the reception of Endymion; and
partly, it is clear, to something not wholly congenial to his powers in the task itself.”
Important Note. Wherever Hyperion is printed in italics or within inverted commas,
the reference is to the poem; and wherever Hyperion is printed in the ordinary type or without
inverted commas, the reference is to the sun-god.
For instance: Hyperion is an epic poem. Or, “Hyperion” bears a Miltonic stamp.
In both these cases the poem is meant.
But: Hyperion had begun to feel apprehensive of a threat to his security.
Here the sun-god is being referred to.

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“Hyperion, A Fragment” A Synopsis

BOOK ONE
Thea’s Visit to Saturn
The Titans had been defeated by their own offspring, the Olympians, who had risen in
revolt against them. Saturn, the leader of the Titans, sat in a valley in a mood of deep dejection.
He sat, “quiet as a stone.” He was feeling absolutely listless because of the defeat that he and his
fellow-Titans had suffered.
To him came Thea, the wife of the sun-god, Hyperion. She told him that she was feeling as
miserable as he on account of the defeat that they had suffered. Saturn said that he had lost not
only his empire but his identity and his real self also. Thea said that he should go with her in
order to join his fellow-Titans who had taken shelter in a den far away from this valley. Saturn
got up to go with her.
Hyperion, the Sun-god, Still Supreme in His Sphere
There was one Titan who had still not been defeated and who still held sway over his
sphere. He was Hyperion, the god of the sun. But even he was feeling apprehensive lest he should
be overthrown. His anxiety about the possibility of his being dethroned made him restless. In this
state of mind he heard a voice whispering into his ears. It was the voice of his aged father. Coelus
(or Uranus), who now spoke to him from somewhere in heaven. Coelus urged him to go and meet
his fellow-gods who had been defeated and who were therefore feeling very despondent. On
hearing these words. Hyperion got up and, leaving the planet of the sun, plunged into the deep
night in order to go down to the earth and meet his defeated fellow-Titans.
BOOK TWO
Saturn’s Arrival Among the Defeated Gods
In the meantime Saturn and Thea had arrived at the place where most of the defeated
Titans and Giants had taken refuge in a cave among the rocks; On arriving there Saturn felt even
sadder than before. He spoke to the defeated Titans about the prevailing state of affairs. He said
that he could not understand how and why they had been defeated. Saturn asked the ex-god of
the sea, Oceanus, if he could offer any help and guidance to them all.
The Views of Oceanus and Clymene
Oceanus in his reply said that Saturn was neither the beginning nor the end. The Titans
had surpassed their parents in almost all respects and had displaced them in order to become the
rulers of the universe. Now a new race of gods had proved to be superior to_ the Titans and Giants,
and the new generation had therefore every right to overthrow them and to become the rulers of
the universe in their place. “A fresh perfection treads on our heels”, said Oceanus. He told his
fellow-gods that they should reconcile themselves to the change which had taken place in their
lives. He went on to say that it was the eternal law of Nature that “first in beauty should be first in

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might.” Then the goddess Ceymene spoke. She said that she had heard a music far superior to that
with which the Titans had been familiar and which they themselves could produce. What she
meant was that in the sphere of music too the Titans had been superseded by a new race of gods
represented by Apollo.
Enceladus’s Opposition to Oceanus and Clymene
While both Oceanus and Clymene wanted to convince the defeated gods that the best
course for them would be to reconcile themselves to their changed circumstances, Enceladus, the
Giant, felt deeply annoyed with what these two speakers had said. He regarded the dethronement
of the Titans as an unbearable humiliation and he therefore suggested that the Titans should not
give way to despair but should make a vigorous effort to regain their kingdoms. He said that their
fellow-god Hyperion was still undefeated and that therefore they should not lose hope altogether.
Just then Hyperion arrived at the scene in all his glory. On seeing him, some of the gods, especially
Enceladus, felt even more encouraged in the stand which Enceladus had taken.
BOOK THREE
At this point in the poem, Keats deviates from the story of the Titans and thinks of the
premature death of his brother Tom. A few lines later he says that he would like to sing about
Apollo, “the father of all verse.” He then goes on to describe the strange experience which Apollo
had on his native island of Delos. Apollo was roaming about in a valley on that island when he saw
an “awful godess” coming towards him. Apollo was surprised to see this mysterious figure who
seemed to have come from nowhere. He told the goddess that he had once dreamt of her and that
she must be goddess Mnemosyne. The goddess told him that she had certainly appeared to him
in a dream and that it was she who had placed a golden lyre by his side when he was asleep. From
this golden lyre, Apollo had been able to produce a kind of music which, in sweetness and melody,
exceeded all music which had previously been heard anywhere in the universe. The goddess now
asked Apollo why he had been feeling so sad and why he had been weeping. He replied that there
were certain things which he did not understand. He wanted to know the nature of the stars, the
identity of the power which controlled the forces of Nature, the divinity who ruled the universe,
and so on. He said that he had been feeling troubled by an “aching ignorance” of all these facts.
Mnemosyne made no reply to Apollo’s question. Apollo’s mind was now suddenly illumined by a
new discovery. Mnemosyne’s face brought to his mind the entire past history of mankind, with all
its joys and sorrows, its triumphs and defeats, its agonies, and all its “dire events”. This new
awareness and this new knowledge made Apollo feel that he had become immortal. Wild
convulsions shook his whole body. He experienced an unbearable agony and he seemed to be on
the verge of death. But the very next moment life seemed to return to him. He had “died into life.”
He shrieked in agony and ecstasy. Then he realized that he had become a god. This is how Keats
describes the deification of Apollo. In symbolic terms, Apollo represents Keats himself; and the
description of Apollo’s transfiguration or deification means the ripening or maturing of Keats’s
poetic powers.

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“Hyperion, A Fragment”: A Summary, Book By Book

BOOK ONE
Saturn’s Despondency After His Defeat
The Titans were defeated by the Olympians in a war which had started when the
Olympians rebelled against the authority of the Titans who had been ruling the universe ever since
their conquest of Chaos and Darkness.
Saturn was the chief of the Titans, while Jove or Jupiter was the supreme leader of the
Olympians. The grey-haired Saturn had, after his defeat, taken shelter in a remote and shady
place in a valley, where he now sat, quiet as a stone. Perfect silence prevailed around him. He
was feeling absolutely listless, arid his right hand lay, nerveless, on the ground, looking like the
hand of a dead body. There was no longer the divine rod of authority in his hand. He sat there in
a state of deep despondency, with his eyes closed.
A Visit By Thea
It seemed that no force would be able to wake up Saturn from his trance. But there did
come somebody to wake him up. The visitor was goddess Thea, the wife of the sun-god, Hyperion.
She too was a member of the defeated party, and she too was grief-stricken. She woke up Saturn
from his listlessness and wanted to know how he was feeling. She told him that she had brought
no comfort for him and that she was well aware that he had lost all his power and his authority.
She told him that he could continue sleeping and that she would sit at his feet and weep.
Thea’s Suggestion, Accepted By Saturn
Saturn opened his eyes and, looking around him, realized that he was now a deposed
monarch who had lost all his kingdom. He told Thea that he had not only lost his empire but his
identity and his real self also. He asked her if it would be possible for him to regain his empire. He
said that, if it had been possible for him to find another chaos somewhere, he would have created
another universe out of it, just as another power had originally created a universe from the
primeval Chaos. In reply, Thea suggested that he should visit his fellow-Titans who had taken
refuge at a place to which she could escort him. She wanted that Saturn should rejoin his defeated
fellow-Titans and comfort them. Saturn accepted her suggestion, and they both set out on their
journey.
The Fears of the Undefeated Hyperion, and His Resolve
Some of the defeated Titans had been captured by the victorious gods and been put into
prisons. A few of the other Titans were wandering about in the world at large in a disconsolate
condition. But the majority of them had taken shelter at the particular place where Thea was now
taking Saturn. However, there was one Titan who had still not been defeated and who stills held
sway over his sphere. He was Hyperion, the god of the sun. But, although Hyperion, who lived in
a splendid and radiant palace and who commanded the blazing planet of the sun, was still
sovereign in his own kingdom, he had begun to feel mentally disturbed by certain ill-omens which
seemed to indicate that even he could not feel secure and that his authority might also be

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threatened. The ill-omens almost unnerved Hyperion, but he was able to overcome his fear and,
gathering all his strength and will-power, he declared that he would use his terrible right arm to
infuse terror into the heart of Jove who had rebelled against the authority of Saturn and that he
would even succeed in restoring Saturn’s throne to Saturn.
Hyperion, Urged By Coelus to Go and Meet the Defeated Titans
There were still a few hours before the sun was due to rise. Hyperion had already prepared
himself to start the day’s journey. And, though he was impatient to begin the day, he could not
commence his task before the due hour. He therefore lay down to while away the few hours which
still remained. Although he had formed a strong resolution to fight against Jove, yet his mind was
not at ease. The fear of the danger which threatened his supremacy still weighed upon his mind.
In this state of mind he heard a voice whispering into his ears. It was the voice of his aged father,
Coelus (or Uranus) who now spoke to him from somewhere in heaven. This is what the aged god,
Uranus, said to Hyperion:
“You are the brightest of my children. You were born under mysterious circumstances, and
the mystery of your birth was not revealed even to me and to your mother. You as well as
your brothers and sisters are all manifestations of that beauty which pervades the whole
universe. It is very unfortunate that a civil war has taken place among the gods and
goddesses, as a result of which my eldest son, Saturn, has been defeated and dethroned. I
was in no position to give any help to him. You, my son, are still retaining your authority
and governing your dominion. I want you to go down to the earth and meet Saturn and his
fellow-gods to see what help you can give to them. It is a bad sign that, while you have all
lived and governed your kingdoms with dignity, you are all now experiencing such
emotions as fear, anger, and hope which are the feelings characteristic of mankind and not
of gods.”
At these words, Hyperion got up and, leaving the planet of the sun in the charge of his father who
had spoken to him, plunged noiselessly into the deep night in order to go down to the earth and
meet his fellow-Titans.
BOOK TWO
The Defeated Gods Feeling Miserable
In the meantime, Saturn and Thea had arrived at the place where most of the defeated
Titans had taken refuge in a cave among the rocks. As already pointed out, some of the gods and
goddesses were in prison where they were being tortured. These included Coeus, Gyges, Briareus,
Typhon, Dolor, and Porhyrion. Some others were wandering about aimlessly in the world. They
included Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory; and Phoebs, a daughter of the moon-goddess.
Those who had taken shelter in this cave among the rocks included Creus, lapetus, Cottus, Caf,
Enceladus, Phorcus, Ocaanus, Tethys, Clymsne, Trutnis, Ops. These gods and goddessss included
also Asia, the daughter of the mountain-god Caf by his union with Tellus. All the gods and
goddesses assembled here were in a most wretched and miserable condition because of their
removal from their respective high positions of authority in the universe.
Saturn’s Address to His Fellow-Gods
On arriving at this place, Saturn felt even sadder than before. This god, who had once
wielded supreme authority in the universe, was now experiencing such distressing emotions as

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rage, fear, anxiety, remorse, and revenge. And he experienced not only these emotions but also
that of despair. It seemed that Fate had robbed him of his divine powers and infected him with
the weaknesses and infirmities of human beings. Under the stress of these emotions, Saturn might
have collapsed to the ground but, by chance, he met the eyes of Enceladus of whose exceptional
strength and might he was fully aware. Seeing anger in Enceladus’s eyes, Saturn felt invigorated
and strengthened. The presence of Enceladus acted as a great stimulus upon him, and so he
shouted to the assembled Titans: “Titans, behold your supreme god”. At Saturn’s words some of
the gods groaned, some got up on their feet, some shouted, some wept, some wailed; but all of
them bowed to Saturn reverently. Saturn had now conquered his feelings of fear and despair, and
he spoke in a self-confident manner. Addressing his fellow-gods, he said:
“I do not understand why you should feel so dejected. Neither in my own heart nor in the book of
wisdom which I have always kept close to myself, am I able to discover any reason why
you should have given up all hope. There have been no portents to show that we are a
doomed race. Seeing you in this mood of dejection, I do not know what message I should
give to you. If I ask you to arise, you will groan because you are in no mood to fight; if I ask
you to cringe to the conqueror (Jove) you will still groan because your self-respect will be
hurt. What can I then do? Tell me, my brother-gods, how we can wreak vengeance upon
the rebellious gods who have won a victory over us. You, Oceanus, are a deep thinker. What
advice can you give me?”
Oceanus’s Reply
Saturn here ended his speech. Oceanus now replied to Saturn’s question. This is what
Oceanus said:
“What I have to say should be a source of comfort to you, provided you can find comfort
in what is true. The truth is that we have been defeated not by the power of Jove but in accordance
with Nature’s law. Great Saturn, you have studied this universe but, having been accustomed to
wield unlimited power, you have missed certain small points which lower minds could easily
understand. You should realize that, just as you were not the first power to rule the universe, so
you are not the last. You are not the beginning, and you are not the end. We all acquired our
positions and our authority after the original chaos and the primeval darkness had been
conquered. And just as we are fairer than that chaos and that darkness, those who have now
become the rulers of the universe are fairer than we are. On our heels a fresh perfection treads, a
power more strong in beauty, a power born of us but destined to surpass us just as we surpass the
original chaos and the primeval darkness. Besides, it is not a question of conquest; we have not
been conquered by Jove and his comrades just as we did not in any sense conquer chaos and
darkness; it is just a question of progress which proceeds inevitably according to the law of Nature.
We should not resent having been superseded just as the dull soil does not resent the existence of
the grand forests which it has itself nourished and fed, and just as a tree does not resent the dove
which sits on its branches and sings. We have ourselves begotten those who have now taken our
places as the rulers and, in course of time, they too would be ousted by another race because the
law of Nature is that “first in beauty should be first in “might”. I have been succeeded on my throne
by another god (Neptune) but I am not resentful of him because he is far more impressive in his
appearance and far more handsome than I am. I myself bade farewell to my empire in order to
make way for him, even though I felt sad to relinquish my authority. Now what I want is that you
should understand the principle which is behind our dethronement, and draw comfort from it.”

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Clymene’s Account of Her Strange Experience

None of the gods said anything in response to Oceanus’s speech. The only one who now
spoke was the goddess Clymene. She said that she wanted to tell the assembly of the gods an
experience which she had gone through in the forest and which had convinced her that the gods
who had now come into power after displacing the previous rulers of the universe were really
superior to their predecessors. She said that, while singing and playing on a musical instrument
on the sea-shore, she had suddenly become conscious of a magic influence which seemed to be
coming from an island opposite. She had thereupon thrown away her musical instrument and
started listening to the music which began to come from the same direction. The music which she
heard consisted of a succession of melodious sounds which fell upon her ears one after the other
like pearl beads dropping suddenly from their string. She had never heard such music before; and
it now made her sick with simultaneous feelings of joy and grief. She was filled with joy because
this music was rapturous, and she felt sad because this music was superior to any music which
she herself could produce. The feeling of grief proved to be stronger than the feeling of joy and,
stopping her ears with her hands, shi fled from that place in order not to hear that music any
longer. But a voice, sweeter than all music, followed her, crying: “Apallo! Young Apollo! The
morning-bright Apollo!” What Clymene meant by describing this experience of hers was that the
music of Apollo, who belonged to the new race of rulers, was far superior to the music which could
be produced by the Titans.
Enceladus, Opposed to an Attitude of Passivity and Submission
While both Oceanus and Clymene had wanted to convince the defeated gods that the best
course for them would be to reconcile themselves to their present state, Enceladus the Giant felt
deeply annoyed with what these two speakers had said. Hi regarded the dethronement of the
Titans as an unbearable humiliation and he therefore suggested that the Titans should not give
way to despair but should make a vigorous effort to regain their kingdoms. He said that he would
tell the Titans how they could destroy the power of Jove and how they could once again become
the proud rulers of their realms. He said that he could not forget the days of peace and tranquility
which he had enjoyed during the period of the rule of the Titans, and that he would like those days
to return. Enceladus went on to say that one of the Titans, namely Hyperion, had still not been
displaced and that even the defeated Titans could therefore hope to regain their lost empires. After
expressing these views, Enceladus said that he was happy to note that his words had produced the
desired effect on his listeners.
Hyperion’s Arrival to Meet the Defeated Gods
Just then Hyperion, who had been urged by Coelus (or Uranus) to go down to the earth in
order to meet the defeated Titans, arrived at the scene. When Hyperion alighted on a rock near
the cave, where the defeated gods were holding their conference, his radiance filled the
atmosphere all around. Every gulf, every chasm, every height, and every depth looked bright with
the radiance shed by Hyperion. Hyperion looked at the assembled Titans and noted the
wretchedness of the dethroned gods who could now, in the light being shed all around by
Hyperion, see how miserable they appeared by contrast with him. But Hyperion was in no joyous
mood, because the sight of the defeated and miserable gods filled him also with depression. Four
of the gods including the fierce Encealdus now got up and advanced to greet Hyperion. Going near
him, these four gods shouted the name of Saturn and, in reply, Hyperion answered from the
mountain-peak: “Saturn.” Saturn himself at this time was sitting near the mother of all the gods
whose face showed no joy on account of the sad fate which had overtaken her progeny.

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BOOK THREE
Keats to Sing About Apollo
At this point Keats deviates from the story of the Titans which he has been narrating and
from the role of Hyperion which he has been describing. He thinks of the premature death of his
brother Tom and says that he should turn rather to sing about his own sorrow than about the woes
of the gods. But he does not then proceed to sing even about his own personal sorrow. He says
that he would like to sing about Apollo, “the father of all verse.” The thought of Apollo fills him
with a great enthusiasm and joy, and he calls upon all Nature to put on fresh glory in order to join
him in celebrating the greatness of Apollo who was born on theisland of Delos. He announces to
all Nature that “Apollo is once more the golden theme” of his verse. Evidently, Keats’s purpose
now is to take up the theme of the dethronement of Hyperion by Apollo. But Apollo is not yet a
god. Keats therefore first takes up the theme of how Apollo became a god.
Apollo’s Encounter with an Awful Goddess
When Hyperion stood radiant in the midst of his grief-stricken fellow-Titans, Apollo left
his mother and his twin-sister sleeping in their bower and wandered forth in the morning twilight.
Walking through the lilies of the valley at that early hour, when the nightangale had just stopped
singing and when there were only a few stars left in the sky, Apollo came to a stop on the banks of
a stream and suddenly burst into tears. While he stood there weeping, with his golden bow in his
hand, an awful goddess came and stood before him. Apollo was surprised to see this mysterious
figure who seemed to have come from nowhere. He then realized that he had always been
conscious of the presence of this goddess on this island and that he had often heard the sweep of
her garments over the fallen leaves as she walked about in the valley and in the forest. He told the
goddess that he had either actually seen her before on this island or had dreamed of her. The
goddess replied that he had dreamed of her and that, on waking up from his dream, he had found
a golden lyre which she had placed for him by his side. From the strings of that lyre he had
produced sweet music which the whole universe had heard with both pain and pleasure, realizing
that a new kind of music had come into existence.
The Goddess’s Deep Interest in Apollo
The goddess now asked Apollo why he had been weeping and what it was that had been
making him so sad. She told him that she had been keeping a watch upon him during his hours of
sleep and during his hours of wakefulness ever since his childhood. She said that she had given
up her allegiance to the old gods for his sake and for the sake of the new loveliness which he
possessed and the new music which he had originated.
Apollo’s “Aching Ignorance”
Thereupon Apollo suddenly realized who this goddess was. He said that her name had
suddenly occurred to him and that she must be Mnemosyne. Then he said that his sorrow, which
had made him shed tears, was not a mystery to her and that she knew everything about him. He
went on to say that there were certain things which he did not understand. He wanted the goddess
Mnemosyne to clear his doubts about certain matters. He wanted to know the nature of the stars,
the identity of the power behind the forces of Nature, the divinity who ruled the universe, and the
reason why he was often overtaken by a melancholy which was so deep as to have a numbing effect
on his limbs. He asked her to tell him why he often listened to the sounds of the elements “in
fearless yet in aching ignorance.”

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The Deification of Apollo, Or Keats’s Emergence as a True Poet

Mnemosyne remained silent. Apollo’s mind was now suddenly illumined by a new
discovery. He said that he could read a wonderful lesson in the goddess’s silent face. “Knowledge
enormous makes a god of me”, he said. Then he told her what he could read in her face. Her face
had brought to him a sudden awareness of “names, deeds, old legends, dire events, rebellions,
majesties, sovereign voices, agonies, creations and destroyings.” This new awareness, he said, was
like a wine or an elixir which seemed to deify him and make him immortal. As he said these words,
keeping his eyes steadfast on Mnemosyne, he experienced wild convulsions which shook his whole
body. He underwent an agonizing experience. The agony which he felt was akin to the agony of
death. While he was going through this painful ordeal, Mnemosyne kept her arms upraised like
one who was making a prophecy. At last Apollo shrieked with joy and ecstasy, and from all his
limbs came a glory which showed that he had become a god. Apollo had died into life. Apollo the
mortal was dead bat Apollo the god was born. In other words, Apollo had risen to great heights of
poetry and music by his contact with Mnemosyne who symbolized all human experience, all
experience which mankind had had in the past and an awareness of which is a necessary part of
the equipment of a poet. (Mnemosyne represents not only the past of mankind but also the
present and even the future. The deification of Apollo means that Keats himself feels that he has
become a true poet because of his realization that a keen and sensitive awareness of the reality of
all human experience is essential if a poet wants to write true poetry).
Note. Here the poem breaks off.
Critical Comments on “Hyperion, A Fragment”: Book by Book

CRITICAL COMMENTS ON BOOK ONE
Three Divisions of Book I
The poem opens in in medias res (that is, in the middle of the story). Keats does not begin
his poem from the very beginning. In other words, he does not go back to the origin of the conflict
between the old gods (namely the Titans) and the new gods (namely the Olympians). He starts
the poem at the point where the Titans have already been defeated by the Olympians and have
been dethroned.
In other words, Keats plunges into the story at the point when the defeated Titans, feeling grief-
stricken on account of their dethronement, sit or lie in a state of listlessness or stupor or despair.
Book I falls into three parts. The first part describes the grief of Saturn and of Thea, and their
decision to join their fellow-Titans who have assembled in a cave among the rocks far away from
where Saturn has been sitting silent and “quiet as a stone”. The second part deals with the
apprehensions and fears of the Titan Hyperion, the god of the sun, who is still the master of his
empire and who yet retains his full authority over his realm. The third part of the poem contains
Coelus’s exhortations to Hyperion, and the latter’s departure for the earth to meet his fellow-
gods, leaving the planet of the sun to be looked after by Coelus.

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An Epic Poem: Its Exalted Theme and Exalted Style

Hyperion is an epic poem. An epic has always an exalted theme which is treated in an
exalted style. Now the theme of Hyperionis the war between the Titans and the Olympians and
the outcome of that war. The characters in this poem are supernatural beings. They are the
displaced deities who had been governing the various forces of Nature, and the new deities who
have taken their places. However, we do not meet any of the new deities either in Book I or in
Book II, and the only new deity, namely Apollo, who is introduced to us, appears in Book III.
Books I and II deal wholly with the displaced gods. In any case, the poem does have an exalted
theme. The manner in which Thea is described, for instance, shows that we are not dealing with
human beings but with superhuman beings. By comparison with the goddess Thea, even the tall
Amazon would have appeared to be a mere pigmy. Thea was such a huge and powerful deity that
she could have seized Achilles by his hair and twisted his neck; she could have stopped with one
finger the revolving wheel to which Ixion had been tied; her face was as large as that of the
Memphian Sphinx. Subsequently, Hyperion too is described in the same manner; he too is a god
of gigantic proportions. But, although the gods have been described on a grand scale, their
passions and feelings are similar to those of human beings. The style of the poem is exalted, too.
The poem has been admired widely for the sublimity of its style and the solemnity of its blank
verse.
Pathos, The Keynote of Book I
Pathos is the keynote of Book I. Most of the situations in Book I arouse our deepest
sympathies for the sufferers who are gods and goddesses, no ordinary human beings, but who feel
as wretched and miserable in their defeat as human beings would in theirs. Saturn sits silent with
his right hand “nerveless, listless, dead, unsceptred”; and his “realmless eyes” are closed. This is
a moving picture of the god who was once the ruler of the whole universe. Then there is the moving
picture of Thea who comes to meet Saturn in his misery. She has one hand on that aching spot
where beats the human heart; though an immortal, she is experiencing cruel pain. She speaks to
Saturn some mourning words, telling him that she has brought no comfort for him. The pathos of
the situation deepens when she reminds him that he has lost heaven, that he has lost the earth,
and that he no longer has any authority over the ocean. “All the air is emptied of thine hoary
majesty”, she says. When Saturn opens his eyes and speaks to Thea, his speech further stirs our
sympathy for him. He laments the fact that he has been dethroned completely and that he has
even lost his identity and his real self. He asks, in words which are poignant, whether it would be
possible for him to regain his empire. He would like to know if he can find another chaos from
which he may fashion another universe to govern. The account of the fears and apprehensions of
Hyperion is another pathetic element in the poem. Hyperion feels deeply dejected by the ill-omens
which he has witnessed; and he would like to know what his fate is going to be. He asks if he too
is going to fall like Saturn and if he is going to be deprived of the comforts and peace of his “lucent
empire”. He thinks that he might lose “the blaze, the splendour, and the symmetry”, and that he
would then see only darkness, “death and darkness”.
The pathos of the situation of the Titans is brought out by Coelus when, addressing Hyperion, he
says that his eldest son Saturn had been overthrown and that Saturn had appealed to him for his
help but in vain because he (Coelus) was in no position to offer any help to any of his children.
Coelus then asks if Hyperion too is threatened with a similar fate. Here are the relevant lines
addressed by Coelus to Hyperion:

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I saw my first-born tumbled from his throne!

To me his arms were spread, to me his voice
Found way from forth the thunders round his head!
Pale wox I, and in vapours hid my face.
Art thou, too, near such doom? (Lines 323-27)
The pathos of the speech made by Coelus becomes more keen when Coelus asks Hyperion to go
down to the earth and do something for Saturn who is feeling miserable:
To the earth!
For there thou wilt find Saturn, and his woes.
The Feeling of Awe, Aroused in Our Minds
Another dominant emotion aroused by Book I is that of awe. A feeling of terror is created
in our minds when we read the account of Hyperion entering his palace in a state of indignation:
He enter’d, but he enter’d full of wrath ;
His flaming robes stream’d out beyond his heels,
And gave a roar, as if of earthly fire,
That scar’d away the meek ethereal Hours
And made their dove-wings tremble. (Lines 213-17)
The feeling of terror in our minds is heightened when Hyperion declares that he would drive away
Jove from his throne and reinstate Saturn:
No, by Tellus and her briny robes!
Over the fiery frontier of my realms
I will advance a terrible right arm
Shall scare that infant thunderer, rebel Jove,
And bid old Saturn take his throne again. (Lines 240-50)
Graphic Descriptive Passages, and Vivid Pictures
Book I illustrates also Keats’s descriptive powers. There is plenty of graphic description
here. The most striking passage in this respect is the one in which the palace of Hyperion has been
described. Hyperion’s bright palace is “bastioned with pyramids of glowing gold, and touched with
shade of bronzed obelisks” This palace has many courts, arches, domes, and fiery galleries. The
curtains in this palace are made of clouds supplied by Aurora, the goddess of the dawn. Keats
gives us, indeed, an elaborate and impressive description of this palace. Equally graphic is the
description of Hyperion rushing out of his palace to the eastern gates where “he breathed fierce
breath against the sleepy portals, cleared them of heavy vapours, and burst them wide suddenly
on the ocean’s chilly streams’“. This description continues with a reference to the planet of the
sun, the orb of fire, spinning round m dark clouds and radiating its dazzling rays. Apart from these
elaborate descriptions, we have a large number of brief but vivid pictures in this Book. At the very
outset there is a striking picture of the silence and stillness prevailing around Saturn so that a leaf
falling from a tree down to the ground remains where it has fallen, without moving in the least:

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No stir of air was there,

But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. (Lines 7-10)
Another vivid picture is that of Saturn and Thea continuing to sit together, silent and still for one
whole month, and looking like statues:
One moon, with alteration glow, had shed
Her silver seasons four upon the night,
And still these two were postured motionless,
Like natural sculpture in cathedral cavern;
The frozen God still counchant on the earth,
And the sad Goddess weeping at his feet. (Lines 83-88)
Another notable picture, equally vivid, is that of the various omens which frighten human beings.
The ill-omens which Hyperion witnessed were, however, of a different kind. The omens in his case
were not those which scare human beings:
Not at dog’s howl, or gloom-bird’s hated screech,
Or the familiar visiting of one
Upon the first toll of his passing-bell,
Or prophesyings of the midnightlamp. (Lines 171-74)
Similes, Extended Ones and Short Ones
There are some very striking similes too in this Book. A few of these similes are of an
elaborate and extended kind, which are characteristic of an epic. Here is an example of the
extended simile:
As when, upon a tranced summer-night,
Those green-rob’d senators of mighty woods,
Tali oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars,
Dream, and so dream all night without a stir,
Save from one gradual solitary gust
Which comes from the silence, and dies off,
As if the ebbing air had but one wave;
So came these words and went. (Lines 72-79)
There are a number of short similes also in this Book. The winged attendants of Hyperion standing
in clusters are compared to anxious soldiers who gather on wide plains when an earthquake has
shaken their fortresses and towers. The feeling of agony which creeps through Hyperion’s body

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gradually is compared to a lithe serpent, vast and muscular, moving slowly forward, with head
and neck convulsed on account of over-strained might. Hyperion, plunging into the deep night, is
compared to a diver plunging into the pearly seas.
Like to a diver in the pearly seas,
Foreward he stoop’d over the airy shore,
And plung’d all noiseless into the deep night. (Lines 355-58)
Each of these similes is a vivid picture as well.
CRITICAL COMMENTS ON BOOK TWO
Several Sections of Book II
While Book I is in the nature of an exposition, Book II develops both the argument and
the action of the story, and is important in respect of characterization as well as ideas. This Book
is divisible into several sections which may thus be identified:
(1) The opening lines contain a vivid description of the cave where the defeated
Titans had taken shelter.
(2) This is followed by a description of the assembled gods themselves. Each of the
gods is named and introduced to us briefly with reference to his or her principal feature or
characteristic. Almost each of them is individualized.
(3) The arrival of Saturn and Thea at this cave is then described, with particular
reference to Saturn’s mood of despondency which deepens as Saturn nears the cave.
(4) Saturn then delivers a speech to the assembled gods, expressing his puzzlement
at their mood of hopelessness and despair in the face of their defeat. He seeks the opinion of
Oceanus who is regarded by him as a thinker and philosopher and who should therefore be in a
position to give some sound advice to Saturn in this common calamity.
(5) Oceanus, in his reply, says that the defeat which the Titans have suffered at the
hands of the Olympians was inevitable and follows Nature’s law. He urges the defeated Titans,
and especially Saturn, to reconcile themselves to their dethronement and to accept the inevitable.
(6) Then the goddess Clymene speaks. She gives to the Titans an account of her
experience in the woods when she had heard a music which she had never heard before, a music
which seemed to supersede all the melodies which had ever been heard in the universe before.
She had fled from that music but had been chased by a sweet voice which had again and again
uttered the name of Apollo, “the morning-bright Apollo”.
(7) Enceladus’s reaction to these two speeches, one by Oceanus and the other by
Clymene, is then described. Enceladus is not in favour of submitting to the new powers,
represented by Jove, which have now begun to rule the universe. He counsels the Titans to
undertake to fight against the new gods in order to regain the realms which they have lost.
(8) Finally, in this Book, we have a description of the arrival of the radiant Hyperion
who has come, in obedience to Coelus’s advice, to see with his own eyes the sad condition of his
fellow-Titans in the cave and to help them regain their lost realms, if he can.

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The Epic Strain

The epic strain of the poem continues in Book II. The gods and goddesses are still the
characters with whom we are concerned. These gods and goodesses are now given a concrete and
visible life, even though they are in a mood of despondency and are feeling lifeless. Most of the
gods present are individualized by means of brief pictures of their visible symbols or
characteristics, and some of them are further differentiated from one another by means of the
speeches they make. A reference is made also to the gods who are absent either because they have
been put into prisons or because they are wandering about aimlessly in the world at large. The
description of the various gods and goddesses is awe-inspiring despite the fact that they are in a
state of deep despair. It is noteworthy that, although the characters in the poem are supernatural
beings, yet their feelings and emotions are similar to those of human beings. Sadness and
hopelessness are the two dominant emotions which they all experience. But, besides these
emotions, they also experience rage, fear, anxiety, revenge, remorse, and even hope (the hope of
regaining their kingdoms). The style of Book II is as exalted as that of Book I.
The Concept of Evolutionary Progress in Oceanus’s Speech
Oceanus’s speech is one of the two most important passages in the entire poem, the other
being the passage describing the deification of Apollo in Book III. Oceanus’s speech is the key to
one of the dominant themes of the whole poem. Oceanus justifies the defeat of the Titans at the
hands of the Olympians on the ground that the Olympians surpass the Titans in the same way as
the Titans had surpassed the original chaos and the primeval darkness which the Titans had
superseded. Oceanus tells his fellow-Titans that an endurance of all naked truths and the ability
to accept the facts calmly represent the top of sovereignty. He wants them to understand that the
law of Nature demands the supersession of the beautiful and strong by the more beautiful and the
more strong. The eternal law, says Oceanus, is “that first in beauty should be first in might”. He
tells Saturn that the latter was not the beginning and is not the end. Some of the more important
lines from the speech of Saturn are worth quoting :
Of thunder, or of Jove. (Lines 181-82)
And first, as thou wast not the first of powers,
So art thou not the last; it cannot be:
Thou art not the beginning nor the end. (Lines 188-90)
O folly! For to bear all naked truths,
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty. (Lines 203-5)
And fated to excel us, as we pass

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In glory that old darkness. (Lines21-2-15)

For ‘tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might:
Yea, by that law, another race may drive
Our conquerors to mourn as we do now. (Lines 228-31)
Oceanus’s speech contains the concept of evolutionary progress. The world can never remain the
same. Change is the law of life. Good must give way to better; the strong must give way to the
stronger; the beautiful must yield to the more beautiful. That is how the world has reached its
present stage of development. If there were no change, there would be stagnation. In the political,
social, and cultural worlds, as well as in the world of Nature and in the realms of animal life and
plant life, change and development are inevitable and also desirable. Tennyson afterwards
expressed this idea in one of his poems when he wrote: “The old order changeth yielding place to
new.”
Graphic Descriptions and Vivid Pictures
Keats’s descriptive gift finds a striking illustration in this Book also. First of all, there is
the graphic description of the cave where the defeated gods have taken shelter. It was a den where
no light could shine on the tears of the Titans. It was a place where the Titans could not hear even
their own groans because of “the solid roar of thunderous waterfalls.” It was a place where the
rocks, touching each other’s tops, ‘‘made fit roofing to this nest of woe.” Then we have the
description of the gods themselves. This description consists of a series of closely linked pictures
of the individual gods and goddesses. There was, for instance, Creus whose ponderous iron mace
lay by his side and who had shattered a rock with that weapon. There was Iapetus who held in his
hand a dead serpent, with its forked tongue squeezed from its throat. Iapetus had strangled the
serpent because it had failed to spit poison into the eyes of the victorious Jove. There was Cottus
who lay prone, his chin uppermost, as though in pain. Near him was Asia who had cost her mother
keener birth-pangs than any of her sons had caused her. Asia was seeing visions of her future
glory, and was thinking of the temples which would be built in her honour in the tittles to come.
Above all, there was the giant Enceladus, once tame and mild but now furious and wrathful. In
his imagination he was hurling mountains in the second war which, he thought, would be fought
between the Titans and the new gods. And then, of course, there is the graph c description of the
radiant personality of Hyperion who arrives to meet his fellow-gods. Like the previous description
of Hyperion in all his splendour and glory, this description too is very impressive. The radiance
shed by Hyperion spreads all around him, making every place, every spot, every rock, every corner
look bright. Here is part of this description conveying the radiance and splendour of the sun-god:
Till suddenly a splendour, like the morn,
Pervaded all the beetling gloomy steeps,
All the sad spaces of oblivion,
And every gulf, and every chasm old,
And every height, and every sullen depth,
Voiceless, or hoarse with loud tormented streams :
And all the everlasting cataracts,

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And all the headlong torrents far and near,

Mantled before in darkness and huge shade,
Now saw the light and made it terrible.
It was Hyperion: (Lines 357-67)
Extended Similes, and Brief Similes
There are a number of notable similes in Book II as there were in Book I. Again we have
both kinds of similes, of the extended kind which are typical of epic poetry, and the brief ones.
Here is an extended simile, comparing the increased sadness of Saturn to that of a mortal man on
approaching a mournful house:
As with us mortal men, the laden heart
Is persecuted more, and fever’d more,
When it is nighing to the mournful house
Where other hearts are sick of the same bruise ;
So Saturn, as he walk’d into the midst,
Felt faint, and would have sunk among the rest, (Lines 101-6)
The psychological truth contained in these lines is also noteworthy. Here is another extended
simile:
There is a roaring in the bleak-grown pines
When Winter lifts his voice; there is a noise
Among immortals when a god gives sign,
With hushing finger, how he means to load
His tongue with the full weight of utterless thought,
With thunder, and with music, and with pomp:
Such noise is like the roar of bleak-grown pines;
Which, when it ceases in this mountain’d world,
No other sound succeeds; but ceasing here,
Among these fallen, Saturn’s voice therefrom
Grew up like organ, that begins, anew
Its strain, (Lines 116-27)
These lines, which contain a wonderful Nature-picture are intended to bring out a contrast rather
than to establish a comparison, but the extended picture meant to emphasize the contrast is
certainly remarkable. At the conclusion of the speech made by Clymene we are told that her voice
at the end was drowned by the overwhelming roar of Enceladus just as a timid stream flowing
slowly is ultimately lost in the ocean:
So far her voice flow’d on, like timorous brook
That, lingering along a pebbled coast,
Doth fear to meet the sea: but sea it met,

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And shudder’d; for the overwhelming voice

Of huge Enceladus swallow’d it in wrath:
The ponderous syllables, like sullen waves
In the half-glutted hollows of reef-rocks,
Came booming thus, (Lines 300-7)
Each of these similes, as already pointed out, contains a vivid Nature-picture. Then there are the
brief similes. The imprisoned gods, with their clenched teeth and “all their limbs locked up” are
compared to “veins of metal, crampt and screwed”. Enceladus in his tame and mild state is
compared to a ‘‘grazing oxunworried in the meads.” The melodies coming from Apollo and falling
upon the ears of Clymene are compared to “pearl beads dropping suddenly from their string”. The
shining hoary locks of Saturn are rompared to the bubbling foam around a ship when it sweeps
into a bay at midnight.
CRITICAL COMMENTS ON BOOK THREE
An Abrupt Deviation from the Main Narrative
Book III is apparently an abrupt deviation from the main narrative which is now kept in
abeyance, while Keats proceeds to develop a different theme The theme of Book [II is the process
by which Apollo, a human being, is deified and transformed into a god. There is no doubt that, if
Keats had continued with the poem and completed it, he would have depicted the conflict which
would have inevitably taken place between Apollo and Hyperion, with Apollo gaining a victory
over Hyperion and dethroning the only god of the previous generation who had not yet been
displaced from his position. In that case Book III would have fallen into its proper place, and the
whole poem would have presented a unified structure. As it is. Book HI seems to be a digression.
The main narrative stands still, while Keats takes up a different subject altogether.
An Invocation to the Muse
The opening lines of Book III are an invocation to the Muse. Such invocations are
permissible in epic poetry. From this invocation it seems that Keats would like to commemorate
his brother Tom who had died after a long and lingering illness. Keats calls upon the Muse to leave
the Titans to their woes and to turn to a “solitary sorrow”, meaning his own grief over his brother’s
death. He asks the Muse to dwell upon a “lonely grief”, namely his own grief. But then he changes
his mind and turns his attention to Apollo whom he describes as “the father of all verse”.
Vivid and Sensuous Imgery
The poet’s mood now changes from one of solemnity and sorrow to one of joy; and he is
filled with poetic fervour at the thought of Apollo. He calls upon all Nature to put on a fresh glory
because he is going to celebrate the greatness of Apollo. Keats would like every rose to glow
intensely and to warm the air. He would like all the clouds to float in “voluptuous fleeces” over the
hills. He would like all the shells lying on the sand or in the depths of the sea to turn crimson. He
would like the maid to “blush keenly” as if she had been surprised by a warm kiss. The sensuous
quality of these pictures is noteworthy. He then calls upon the island ofDelos to rejoice because
the poet is going to deal with Apollo:

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Rejoice, O Delos, with thine olives green,

And poplars, and lawn-shading palms, and beech,
In which the Zephyr breathes the loudest song,
And hazels thick, dark-stemm’d beneath the shade:
Apollo is once more the golden theme! (Line 24-28)
The poet then goes on to give us a description of how Apollo issued forth from his bower, leaving
his fair mother and his twin-sister asleep, and how, walking ankle-deep through the lilies of the
valley, he reached the banks of a stream when the nightangale had just ceased its singing, when
only a few stirs were left in the sky, and when the thrush had begun its serene singing. Then comes
the following beautiful picture:
Throughout all the isle Therewas no covert, no retired cave
Unhaunted by the murmurous notice of waves,
Though scarcely heard in many a green recess, (Line 38-41)
The Deification[1] of Apollo
All this was the prelude. We then come to the real theme of Book III. As Apollo stands
weeping on the banks of the stream, an awful goddess suddenly appears before him. This
encounter between Apollo and the goddess, who is no other than Mnemosyne, is a crucial stage
in the development and ripening of Apollo’s genius as a poet-singer. A first Apollo feels perplexed,
not knowing who this goddess is. She confirms his vague feeling that he had dreamed of her and
says that she had placed a golden lyre by his side when he was asleep She then informs him that
it was from that instrument that he had been able to produce the wonderful music which the whole
universe had heard with untiring ears. Next, she asks him the reason for his weeping. Apollo now
suddenly realizes that this goddess is Mnemosyne, and says that there is nothing that he can tell
her because she knows everything about him. Now it is his turn to ask her certain questions. He
would like to know why he is so unhappy, and he would like her to enlighten him about the nature
of this universe, about the nature of the stars and the moon and about the nature of the divinity
which governs this universe. He speaks of his “aching ignorance” which makes him miserable.
The goddess, who has given up her allegiance to the old gods for the sake of this budding genius
who is going to attain the maturity of his poetic powers, remains mute. But Apollo is now able to
read a wondrous lesson” in her silent face. Her face reveals to Apollo the accumulated experience,
knowledge, and wisdom of all the past ages. Having come into a possession of all that store of
knowledge and experience visible in her face, Apollo feels that he is on the way to become a god.
But, first, let us see what he reads in the face of this goddess:
Names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions,
Majesties, sovran voices, agonies,
Creations and destroyings, all at once
Pour into the wide hollows of my brain,
And deify me, as if some blithe wine
Or bright elixir peerless I had drunk,

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And so become immortal,. . . . (Line 114-20)

Apollo’s whole body is now shaken by “wild commotions”. He seems like a man struggling at the
gate of death, or like one who is taking leave of pale immortal death and, with a pang, dies into
life.[2] Apollo goes through an agonizing experience at the end of which he shrieks with joy and
ecstasy. He has now become a god.
The Allegorical Significance of Apollo’s Transformation
Now, this passage describing the transformation of Apollo from a mortal human being into
an immortal god has to be studied at two levels. Firstly, Apollo will now be in a position to
challenge the supremacy of Hyperion, the god of song and poetry, as well as the god of the sun,
who still retains his empire while the other old gods have already been dethroned. The strife
between a new god, Apollo, and the old god Hyperion, will end in Apollo’s triumph, so that the
process of the dethronement of the old generation of gods will be completed. This would, of
course, have been the direction which the poem would have taken if Keats had gone on with it in
order to complete it. The underlying theme of the poem as a whole would then have been the
concept of evolutionary progress of mankind in all fields of human life, as well as of the universe
as a whole. That would have been, and still is, the symbolic significance of the poem if approached
in an objective manner. But there is another level at which we can study Book III, and that is the
subjective level. On the subjective level, Book III is an allegorical account of Keats’s view of his
own development as a poet. If Apollo’s insight into the essentials of life makes a god of him, Keats’s
sympathetic understanding of the realities of life makes a true poet of him. Keats, the poet, would
no longer be satisfied with a world of imagination. He has come into contact with the stark reality
of human life. The lingering death of his brother is one of the circumstances which have led to the
deepening of his sensibilities. He would now like to write realistic poetry dealing with human
sorrow and human suffering, and he would describe the wisdom which comes from human
tragedies. Apollo’s encounter with Mnemosyne and his transfiguration are thus an allegorical
representation of Keats’s emergence as a true poet, as a poet who would now deal with the truths
of life and the reality of human suffering rather than try to escape from this actual world into a
world of fancies.
No Lowering of the Emotional Pitch in Book III
Book III is written in the same epic style in which Books I and II had been written. There
is no lowering of the emotional pitch. If anything, the pitch rises somewhat because the poet has
now involved himself in the story which he had been writing. He has infused his own personality
into that of Apollo, thus making his poem doubly interesting. Of course, we cannot go into the
question of how Keats would have gone on with the poem in case he had decided to complete it.
But this much is certain that the poem, apart from being an allegory of the concept of evolutionary
progress, would also have been an allegory of his own mind and soul. In fact, the personal allegory
is completed already, while the other allegory remained to be completed.

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Hyperion”, An Epic of Beauty’s Triumph
First in Beauty Should Be First in Might

The fragmentary epic, Hyperion, is concerned chiefly with beauty. A war in
heaven was the basis for the narrative which Keats had planned to write. An older race
of gods known as the Titans had been overthrown by the younger Olympians.
Hyperion, the sun-god, after whom the poem was named, had been visualized by Keats
as the champion of the Titan cause because he was the only one of them yet undefeated
when the poem begins. The main action of the poem would almost certainly have been
the overthrow and supersession of Hyperion by the Olympian Apollo. The fundamental
theme, then, is the war which had taken place between two classes of gods. From the
outset we find ourselves in the company of the defeated Titans, experiencing their
bitter sorrow and asking their questions; and the centrality of beauty is asserted
precisely here, because the only theatrical answer to the question why the older gods
have suffered at the hands of the younger gods is that beauty should triumph and that
in the present case it has actually triumphed. The victorious Olympians are more
beautiful than the Titans; there is no more to be said on this point because “it is the
eternal law that first in beauty should be first in might.” This one statement made by
Oceanus not only puts beauty at the centre of the poem but interweaves it with pain by
denning a metaphysic of suffering out of beauty’s triumph. To the riddle of the defeat
of the Titans, the solution is that the less beautiful must be superseded and pushed into
the background. In this poem Keats simultaneously vindicates the beautiful and gives
his explanation of the pain and suffering in this world. In his view the pain and
suffering of the world are the price of beauty’s victory. The survival of the fittest is the
tune to which creation dances; this constitutes the world’s outward drama and equally
its inner sense. The greater or the fitter is one who is the more beautiful because
Nature’s law is that first in beauty should be first in might.
The Problem of Suffering and Pain

The poem opens with a striking picture of Saturn sitting still and silent after his
defeat. He is joined by the goddess Thea (who was the wife of Hyperion, the sun-god).
She rouses Saturn from his stupor in order to stress his total discomfiture and to say
that she has to offer no explanation of these recent events and that she has no comfort
to offer either. “I have no comfort for thee, no, not one”, she pointedly says. In reply,
Saturn asks her if his feeble shape is really his and if his voice is really his. In other
words, through Saturn’s questioning, Keats raises the problem of human suffering (even

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though the questioner is a god). Thea only understands that disaster has befallen the
Titans. Saturn only understands the pain of defeat. Both of them want to understand
more; and Keats now sends them together to that sad place where Cybele and the
bruised Titans sat in mourning. Some of the defeated Titans are then named and
described, whereafter Saturn proceeds to address them. His speech goes deeper still into
the sheer puzzle of pain. He puts it thus:
Not in my own sad breast,
Which is its own great judge and searcher out,
Can I find reason why ye should be thus: (II, 129-31)
At the end of his speech he turns to Oceanus whose “severe content”, which is the result
of thought and musing, has surprised him and from whom he now seeks guidance.
Stoic Resignation to the Truth
It is Oceanus who, in his reply to Saturn’s question, urges his fellow-gods to see
their Titanic woes as part of a process called beauty’s triumph. Whether the process
justifies the pain involved is not easy to decide. Oceanus proclaims his message to be “the
pain of truth”; but at the same time he asserts that those who take his message to be
painful are foolish. The dominant note of the speech of Oceanus is Stoic resignation to
the truth rather than welcome of it. He concludes with the following advice:
Receive this truth, and let it be your balm.
But there is no suggestion that pain can be transformed into something else. In
other words, pain and suffering remain pain and suffering, and cannot undergo any
mystic transformation. All that Oceanus can say is that the defeated gods have to suffer
but that they are suffering in a good cause. So his mandate is that the sufferers must
achieve calm and tranquility.
The Superior Beauty of the New Sea-God and of the New God of Music
Oceanus cites his own individual defeat as an illustration of the general principle
which he has just laid down. He refers to the new Olympian god who has overthrown
him. He speaks about the new god of the sea in ardent terms, praising the beauty and
the glow of the new god. Oceanus was so impressed by the new god that he voluntarily
relinquished his position as the sovereign of his empire and came away from his
headquarters, so to speak. Following Oceanus, the goddess Clymene expresses her own
sense of bewilderment but then goes on to speak of Apollo in the same eloquent and
glowing terms in which Oceanus had spoken about his successor. Says she:
A voice came sweeter, sweeter than all tune,
And still it cried, “Apollo ! Young Apollo!”
I fled, it follow’d me, and cried “Apollo”! (II, 292-94)
Thus the reference to Apollo emphasizes a singing voice of the utmost beauty. And the
beauty is, of course, the point, because the final triumph of beauty will be the triumph of
Apollo; and in this way Oceanus’s assertion of the eternal law of Nature will be

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vindicated. No doubt, Enceladus, who speaks after Clymene, rejects both her opinion
and the view of Oceanus. Enceladus describes Oceanus as “over-wise” and he describes
Clymene as “over-foolish”. Enceladus speaks in a militant tone, and he relies on
Hyperion to come to the rescue of the defeated Titans. But the event described in Book
III, in which Apollo achieves his deification, clearly shows that Enceladus’s defiance and
militancy would come to nothing, if the poem had been continued, it would have
described the conflict between Hyperion and the new god Apollo, and it would have
described the triumph of the latter who is more beautiful by virtue of his music and
melody the like of which had never before been heard in the universe.
Discuss the theme of Hyperion. How far, in your view, has Keats
succeeded in dealing with the theme in the existing fragment of the
poem?
The Subject of the Epic: the War Between the Gods
Although Hyperion is an incomplete poem and was therefore described as a
fragment, yet the idea behind it emerges clearly as we go through it. The subject which
Keats chose for his poem was the war between the Titans and the Olympians, and the
victory of the latter over the former.
If the poem had been completed, Keats would almost certainly have described
retrospectively some of the main episodes in the war which has ended when the poem
begins. After describing the course of the war, he would have gone on to pick up the
thread of the narrative from the point where Apollo is transformed into a god. Then
would have come the crux of the whole saga, namely an encounter between Hyperion
and Apollo, and the triumph of the latter. As it stands, the first two books of the epic
describe the state of affairs after the war between the two classes of the gods has ended
in the defeat of the Titans, with the exception of Hyperion who still retains his
sovereignty over his realm of the sun. The Titans are feeling very despondent and are
on the verge of total despair, with exception of Encladus who is still in a defiant mood.
Oceanus, Asked For His Views
The chief of the Titans, namely Saturn, is feeling even more grief-stricken than
the others. Hyperion’s wife Thea comes to him and concurs with him so far as his bleak
view of the situation is concerned. Satan laments the loss of the power and authority,
which he says, he had always exercised in 3 benevolent manner so as to keep his subject
happy. Thea takes him to the den where the other Titans sit or lie in a despondent state.
There Saturn makes a speech to his fellow-gods, expressing his puzzlement over the
defeat which they have suffered. At the end of his speech he turns to’ Oceanus, the
“sophist and sage”, and asks him for help and guidance in the present situation. Saturn
has perceived an expression of “severe content” on the face of Oceanus; and this makes

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him think that Oceanus may be able to throw some light on the problem which is baffling
Saturn.
The Underlying Idea of the Poem, Stated by Oceanus
It is the speech which Oceanus makes in reply to Saturn’s question that contains
the underlying idea of the whole poem. This underlying idea is that things can never
stand still in this universe and that change and development are the law of Nature.
According to Oceanus, progressive change must always take place (whether by
evolution or by revolution). That is why we may say that the concept of evolutionary
progress is the theme of the poem or that Keats is here writing an epic of the
revolutionary idea. Oceanus makes some very significant and memorable remarks, his
object being not to incite the gods against the victorious ones but to make it possible for
them to reconcile themselves to their defeat.
Saturn, Not the Beginning Nor the End
Oceanus tells the gods that the proper course for them to follow now is to be
contented with their lot and to accept it even if means a loss of dignity. He says that he
would be able to provide much comfort to them by his arguments provided they are
willing to draw comfort from the facts as they are. He says that the Titans have fallen
from their high positions as a result of the operation of the law of Nature and not because
of the destructive thunderbolts of Jove. He tells Saturn in particular that, having been
the supreme ruler of the universe and having held a position far above the others, he had
missed the small point which minds of a lower order would fully perceive. According to
Oceanus, Saturn has missed the route to wisdom and truth. Oceanus says that Saturn
should realize that just as he was not the first ruler of the universe so he cannot be the
last ruler. Saturn could not have remained the ruler of the universe for ever. “Thou art
not the beginning nor the end,” Oceanus tells him. Originally chaos and darkness had
prevailed in the universe. From the chaos and darkness had come light, and with light
had come life. It was at this point that the first gods, Heaven and Earth, came into being.
Then Saturn was born, the first issue of the union of Heaven and Earth. Then all the rest
of the race of Titans and the race of Giants followed, so that they all found themselves to
be the rulers of the various beautiful kingdoms. Oceanus points out to his fellow-gods
that they should not be depressed by the loss of their kingdoms, because the real height
of supremacy lies in the ability to look facts in the face in a spirit of complete calmless:
And to envisage circumstance, all calm,
That is the top of sovereignty.
First in Beauty Should Be First in Might
Oceanus, countinuing his discourse, says that the Titans who were born of the
union of Heaven and Earth had surpassed their parents in beauty, in compactness, in
symmetry, in will-power, in the freedom of action, in the spirit of comradeship, and in
a thousand other ways. And just as they had surpassed their parents, so the next
generation of gods, led by Jove, had surpassed the Titans:

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And fated to excel us,………
Oceanus says that the Titans had to be succeeded by a power more beautiful and more
strong than the Titans, even though that power had been begotten by the Titans
themselves. The law governing the universe according to Oceanus is that “first in beauty
should be first in might.” According to this law, the Olympians (Jove and his comrades)
would in course of time be dethroned by another race which would be more beautiful
and therefore more strong. Oceanus then cites his own ease, saying that the new god of
the sea possesses greater glory than Oceanus and has such a glow of beauty in his eyes
that Oceanus had voluntarily surrendered his empire to him and departed thence to
come to this den to meet his fellow-Titans. Oceanus ends his exhortation by saying to his
fellow-Titans: “Receive the truth and let it be your balm.”
Keats’s Message in the Fragmentary Epic, Expressed Fully
Now, this is the truth which Keats wants also us to recognize and accept.
Change, flux, ferment, development, evolution, revolution—these are inevitable. Change
may come steadily or change may come in the form of the French Revolution or the
Russian Evolution; but change must come. Change may take place peacefully or change
may come through conflict and war; but come it must. Mankind should remain
prepared for change: slow and steady, or violent and swift. And change in this universe
has always been progressive. Saturn claims that his rule was a benevolent one.
Speaking to Thea, he deplores the fact that he would no longer be able to exercise his
benign influence on the planets, on the winds and seas, and on the life of mankind. He
deplores the fact that he would no longer able to perform those acts by means of which
he, as the supreme deity, used to give an outlet to his love for mankind as well as for the
forces of Nature. He deplores the fact that he has lost his “strong identity” and his “real
self”. He says that he would try to re-establish himself as the chief ruler of the universe.
But, in the light of Oceanus’s discourse which comes later in the poem, we feel sure that
Saturn’s reasoning is fallacious. His rule must have been benign, as he says. But what
makes him think that his successor would not prove even more benign or that his
successor would not do greater good to the universe than Saturn himself done? The
continuity of Saturn’s rule would have meant stagnation. There is no end to the good
that can be done to mankind, and there is no end to the evolutionary process so far as
the universe as a whole is concerned. This is the valuable lesson which we are expected
to draw from Keats’s poem as it stands. The narrative about the war between the
defeated gods and the victorious ones, and especially the encounter between Hyperion
.and Apollo, is certainly not complete; but Keats’s message is complete, though the poem
is a fragment.
Oceanus’s View Reinforced By Clymene’s Experience
The lesson urged by Oceanus is reinforced by Clymens’s account of her strange
experience. She had suddenly heard a new kind of music which had enchanted her. The

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new “blissful golden melody” which she had suddenly heard had made her “sick with joy
and grief at once”. She had felt joyous because of the repturous notes of music which she
had heard, but she had felt sad at the thought that her own music had been superseded
by this new music. She had fled from the spot but had been chased by a sweet voice which
kept uttering the name of Apollo. Clymene’s experience implies that a new musician has
appeared on the scene and will now dethrone the existing deity governing the realm of
music. This again is a case of evolutionary or revolutionary change. Clymene herself is
reconciled to this change, but gods like Enceladus are not.
Enceladus’s Militancy, Unjustified
Enceladus refers to Oceanus as “over-wise” and to Clymene as “over-foolish”.
Enceladus is still in a defiant mood, and in his imagination is hurling mountains upon
his enemies. Enceladus speaks scornfully about Oceanus, calling him “thou sham
monarch of the waves.” Enceladus is burning with the fire of revenge. He is not only
sorry because the Titans have lost their realms but he is even more sorry at the loss of
those days of peace and “slumberous calm” which the Titans used to enjoy during
Saturn’s reign. Enceladus argues that Hyperion is still undefeated, and that there is still
a hope for the Titans to win a victory over the Olympians-and to re-establish themselves
as the rulers of the universe. The point here is that Enceladus’s whole approach is wrong
because Enceladus has not been able to grasp the truth contained in the speech of
Oceanus. Enceladus is an uncompromising militant. He would learn his lesson only
when Hyperion too is overthrown.
An Epic of Beauty’s Triumph: The Meaning of Beauty
One other point that deserves attention in connection with the theme of this
poem is that beauty is Oceanus’s criterion of superiority. The eternal law, according to
Oceanus, is that “first in beauty should be first in might.” now, we can understand the
idea of evolutionary progress and we can understand also the revolutionary idea; but
it is somewhat difficult to understand the concept of the progressive change brought
about by superior beauty. Science teaches us the theory of evolution. This biological
theory needs no explanation. We can also understand evolutionaty development or
revolutionary changes in the political, social, and cultural life of mankind. History
provides countless examples of such changes. In fact, changes of this kind are taking
place before our very eyes. But what does Oceanus or Keats mean by saying that first in
beauty should be first in might? Well, this poem is not a scientific discourse. Keats wants
us to look at the evolutionary development or progress with the eyes of a poet and not
with the eyes of a scientist. For Keats, beauty was the supreme consideration. Beauty
was the supreme power in his eyes. Beauty was a magnificent obsession with him. “A
thing of beauty is a joy for ever”, he had written. Later he was to write:
Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

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Of course, beauty does not merely mean physical attractiveness. For the mature Keats,
beauty came to be identified with truth. Beauty has thus intellectual and philosophical
connotations in Keats’s eyes, Truth implies all the facts of life in the aggregate, all the
accumulated knowledge and wisdom of all mankind. It is only a man with a vast vision
who can accept the entire range of the life of the universe, including the life of mankind,
and who can be said to have a capacity to appreciate beauty. Interpreted thus, Oceanus’s
criterion of beauty does not conflict basically with the scientific view of evolution. Thus
considered, Keats’s poem becomes an epic of beauty’s triumph. Keats’s approach to the
whole issue is aesthetic, as is con-finned by the experience of Clymene who represents
the artistic temperament.
The Relevance of Apollo’s Deification in Book III
A discussion of the theme’ of theHyperion cannot end here. There is something
more to it. While the first two books form a compact unit, Book III marks an abrupt
transition which mars the structure of the poem. Book III contains an account of the
experience by which Apollo was transformed into a god. Now, if Keats had been able to
complete the poem, this particular episode would have fallen into place. After describing
the process of Apollo’s deification, Keats would have gone on to describe a second war
between the Titans (with Hyperion and Enceladus at their head) and the Olympians
(with Jove as their leader). The central episode in this second conflict would have been
an encounter between Hyperion and Apollo in which Apollo would have won, not by the
force of arms but by the sheer power of his enchanting music. Perhaps, Hyperion,
overwhelmed by that music, would have surrendered as readily to his opponent as
Oceanus had previously surrendered to Neptune. But the poem breaks off at the point
where Apollo has been transfigured and deified.
A Second Theme of the Poem: The Symbolism of Apollo’s Deification
The process by which Apollo becomes a god is itself significant because here we
have, in additions to its obvious meaning, a symbolic description by Keats of Keats’s
own emergence as a mature poet. In symbolic terms, Apollo is Keats himself. Apollo has
been feeling afflicated by a vague grief and has often wept because of this grief. When
he comes into contact with Mnemosyne, he experiences a strange exhiliration and asks
her several questions regarding the nature of this universe and the divinity who controls
the powers of Nature. He speaks to her of his “aching ignorance”. Mnemosyne makes no
reply. Apollo thereupon suddenly discovers a wonderful meaning in the expression of
her silent face. Her face proves to be a source of infinite knowledge to him and he says
that this new knowledge which he has derived from her face makes him think that he
has become a god. He reads in her face names, deeds, gray legends, dire events,
rebellions, majesties, sovran voices, agonies, creations and destroyings. Thereupon he
is shaken by convulsions and tortured by an indescribable agony. He experiences the
agony of a dying man but in the very moment of his death he is reborn. He dies into life,
and he is reborn as a celestial being. Apollo has become a god. In symbolic terms, Keats
the poet has attained matarity and the ripeness of his poetic powers. Keats has acquired

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“the lore of good and ill” and, leaving the world of Flora and old Pan far behind, he has
passed to the nobler world of human suffering and human strife. Now he will write truer
and higher poetry than before (and the great odes were a specimen of that poetry). It is
to be noted that Mnemosyne’s face contains all life, past, present, and even to come. She
is the eternal existence of the universe, as it were. She belongs to the old order, and also
to the new, for she is immanent and everlasting. She is a mirror of all the essential facts
of life—”agonies, creations and destroyings.” And of her Keats had dreamed. She was
“the vast idea” that had come to him that night as he slept on Leighs Hunt’s sofa. She had
become the “might abstract idea of beauty in all things”; and Keats had struggled
through “purgatory blind” for a vision of her, face to face. Now he had achieved what he
sought, and “knowledge enormous mode a god of him” through the pain of a death and
a second birth. Keats has become a true poet through a comprehension of history and
change human suffering.
A Complete Poem in One Sense
Thus Hyperion is a complete poem so far as its basic themes are concerned.
What is not complete is the story of the conflict between Hyperion and Apollo.
To what extent does Hyperion meet the requirements of the epic form
of poetry?
Characteristics of an Epic Poem
An epic is a long narrative poem with a lofty theme treated in a lofty style. An epic
generally deals with the mighty deeds of heroes, be they men or gods or both. An epic Is always
written in the same metre throughout. The subject of an epic poem may be some well-known
legend or some momentous sequence of historical events. An epic poem portrays characters on
a grand scale. An epic is written in a grand style. An epic has a grand underlying idea. Thus
grandeur is the keynote of an epic poem. Some of the best-known epic poems in western
literature are the Iliad and theOdyssey by Homer, and the Divine Comedyby Dante. (In Indian
literature the Ramayanaand the Mahabharata are outstanding examples of epic poetry
recognized by the whole world).
The Subject of Keats’s Epic Poem “Hyperion”

Keats intended his Hyperion to be an epic poem. It was originally meant to be an epic
in ten or twelve books. Keats’s purpose was to describe the warfare of the earlier Titanic dynasty
with the later Olympian dynasty of Greek gods and, in particular, one episode of that warfare,
namely the dethronement of the sun-god Hyperion by a younger god called Apollo. The theme
of the war between the Titans and the Olympians who overthrew the former often occurs in the
literature which Keats was fond of reading. The specific theme, namely the dethronement of
Hyperion, the old sun-god, by Apollo, the new god, is Keats’s own. Apollo is also the god of
poetry, and so the story of Apollo and Hyperion was perhaps going to. symbolize the fate of the

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poet as a creator. Since the poem is unfinished, we cannot be sure. In any case, it is obvious that
Keats’s poem has a lofty theme.
Very Little Action in This Epic Poem
An epic poem abounds in heroic actions. However, there is a dearth of action
in Hyperion. The reason for this dearth is that, when the poem begins, the Titans have already
been defeated by the Olympians. In other words, the main action of the story has already taken
place. Perhaps, if Keats had continued with the poem, he would have narrated some of the major
episodes in the warfare retrospectively. But as the poem stands, there is some talk of heroic
action, especially by Enceladus and Hyperion himself, but there is actually little of such action
in the poem. (The material for the poem has been drawn from Greek mythology, a knowledge of
which was derived by Keats from various sources.)
The Characters in The Poem: Saturn
As already indicated, an epic poem has an exalted theme treated in an exalted style, but
the portrayal of characters is perhaps even more important. The characters must be heroic
beings. They may be men or gods, or both. Hyperion deals only with gods. There is, to be sure,
one human being: namely Apollo, but he has a divine origin; and, what is more, he is deified in
the poem, thus becoming a. god (who will challenge the sovereignty of Hyperion). The leading
characters in Keats’s poem are Saturn, Thea, Hyperion, Oceanus, Enceladus, Clymene,
Mnemosyne, and Apollo. Keats’s portrayal of these characters is certainly very impressive, even
though most of the gods including a few from this list are suffering from a deep depression of
spirits on account of the defeat which they have suffered at the hands of the Olympians. We meet
Saturn in the very opening lines where he is hardly depicted as a heroic figure. Saturn is
described as sitting in a valley, silent and motionless, with “his old right hand” lying on the
ground “nerveless, listless, .dead, and unsceptred”. Subsequently also he produces as
impression, more of weakness and helplessness than of heroism. In reply to Thea’s speech, for
instance, he laments the defeat of the Titans in language which arouses our sympathy rather
than admiration. Later still, we find him experiencing all those emotions which would become a
human being more than an immortal god who had been the chief ruler of the universe. The ex-
ruler of the universe is described as experiencing such emotions as grief, rage, fear, anxiety, but
most of all despair. It seems that Fate has poured a mortal oil upon his head and deprived him
of his god-like qualities and attributes. In spite of all this, the figure of Saturn does create an
impression of hugeness and vastness. His very lament over the loss of his empire conveys to us
some idea of his past glory.
Character-Portrayal: Thea
The portrayal of Thea produces a slightly more favourable impression. Her very size
and stature give rise to a feeling of awe in our hearts. The tall Amazon, we are told, would have
looked like a pigmy by the side of this goddess. Thea would have seized Achilles by the hair and
twisted his neck. She could have, with one finger, brought to a stop the ever-revolving Ixion’s
wheel. Her face was as large as that of Memphian Sphinx pedestalled in an Egyptian palace.
Her face could be called beautiful if the expression of sorrow on it had not seemed to be even
more beautiful than the face. She has one hand upon her heart as if she were feeling a cruel pain
even though she is an immortal.

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Character-Portrayal: Oceanus
Of Oceanus we are not given any physical description, but he emerges as one of the
most impressive figures in the poem. He is a sage and a philosopher. The defeat of the Titans has
not made him despondent. He has been able to reconcile himself to the defeat by his cogitation,
contemplation, and musing, so that there is an expression of “severe content” on his face. He
tries his utmost to provide comfort to the grief-stricken gods and goddesses by his philosophy.
His discourse is one of the grandest passages in the whole poem. It is, indeed, a memorable
exhortation, pregnant with wisdom. His heroism lies in this capacity to explain and justify the
defeat which the Titans have suffered at the hands of the younger gods. It is his great intellect
and his deep wisdom which make a hero of him in our eyes.
Character-Portrayal: Enceladus
Enceladus is another striking character in the poem. He was once tame and mild like
an ox grazing calmly in a pasture. But at this time he is tiger-passioned, lion-thoughted, and
wroth. In his imagination he is hurling mountains at his opponents in the second war which is
yet to come. Oceanus’s exhortation produces no effect at all on this fearless giant. He dismisses
the counsel offered by Oceanus as of no account at all. He addresses Oceanus as “thou, sham
monarch of the waves”, and reminds him of the scalding which Oceanus had received during the
war. Enceladus’s view is that the Titans must not lose heart because of their defeat but should
get ready to fight again in order “to stifle that puny essence in its tent” (that is, to destroy the
power of Jove who, in the eyes of Enceladus, is a puny or insignificant being as compared to the
older gods). Enceladus’s defiance reminds us of Satan’s in Paradise Lost.
Character-Portrayal: Clymene
Another character who wins our sympathy and even our admiration is Clymene. She is
a modest goddess who speaks somewhat shyly and timidly but who strikes us as an admirable
being by virtue of her sensitive and artistic temperament. She is fond of singing and playing on
musical instruments. When she suddenly hears a new kinds of music, which comes to her from
an island in the sea, she feels enchanted and bewitched. Although she tries to run away from
that music, she is chased by a voice which keeps shouting the name of Apollo. Evidently, Clymene
has felt completely overwhelmed by the sweetness of this new music the like of which had never
been heard before.
Character-Portrayal: Mnemosyne
Mnemosyne is another unforgettable character. It is she who confers godhood on
Apollo. She has appeared to him in a dream, and she had placed by his side a golden lyre from
the strings of which he was able to produce unprecedented music. It is by looking at her face that
Apollo undergoes a transformation and “dies into life.” In her face he reads a wondrous lesson;
there he reads names, deeds, gray legends, dire events, rebellions, majesties, sovran voices,
creations and destroyings, all at once. She personifies the past, the present, and even the future.
She is undoubtedly a grand figure in the poem.
Character-Portrayal: Hyperion
However, it is the portrayal of Hyperion which stirs in us feelings of awe, terror,
admiration, and sympathy. Keats devotes plenty of space to a portrayal of Hyperion. Hyperion
still retains his sovereignty, his rule, and his majesty. Blazing Hyperion sits on his “orbed fire”,

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inhaling the incense sent up from man to the sun’s god. He paces from hill to hill with “stride
colossal”. Entering his palace, he gives a roar which scares away the Hours. On he flares from
vault to vault till he reaches the gate of the central dome where he stamps his foot fiercely. And
yet, despite all this show of strength, the great sun-god is experiencing fear and apprehension
lest he too should be dethroned. However, he takes heart when Father Uranus speaks to him in
a whisper from heaven, urging him to rise above his fears and to go down to the earth in order
to give whatever comfort and help he can to the defeated Titans. If Keats had continued the
poem, he would have surely depicted Hyperion in action against Apollo, waging a mighty
though losing battle against the younger god.
A Grand Idea Behind the Poem: Evolutionary Progress
There is thus no doubt at all that the characters in this poem have been drawn on a
grand scale and are worthy of an epic. We then come to the idea behind the poem. As already
pointed out, this idea too is grand. In fact, there are two grand ideas behind the poem. One is to
be found in the speech of Oceanus who urges the defeated Titans to accept their defeat with a
good grace. He explains to them that evolution is the law of nature, and that no one can govern
the universe for all time. He says that just as chaos and darkness had given way to light and life,
and just as Heaven and Earth had been conquered by Saturn and his fellow-Titans, so the Titans
must now accept their dethronement by the Olympians as an essential and inevitable part of the
scheme of things. Saturn was not the first and he cannot be the last of powers. “So on our heels
a fresh perfection treads”, he says. Those who have conquered the Titans will themselves be
conquered one day by some other gods. We may define the principle underlying the speech of
Oceanus as evolutionary progress or as revolutionary development (coup d’etat). We can also
regard his speech as advocating the ideal of beauty. Perhaps the most important lines in this
speech are:
for ‘tis the eternal law
That first in beauty should be first in might.
From this point of view Hyperion may be regarded as an epic of beauty’s triumph.
The Other Grand Idea: A Knowledge of the Past
The other grand of idea underlying this poem is that a poet can attain the height of his
powers only if he comes into close contact with the stern and stark realities of human life. A poet
must not live in an ivory tower. Apollo has been experiencing a vague sorrow. His sorrow has
been a source of great perplexity to him because he cannot understand what is tormenting him.
There are several questions which he puts to Mnemosyne, and he receives an answer simply by
looking at her face more closely. From her face he derives enormous knowledge which makes a
god of him. What is this knowledge which he obtains? This is knowledge of the entire history of
mankind. Apollo’s attaining this knowledge means that he has become fully acquainted with the
sorrows, sufferings, agonies, and the tumults of the life of mankind. It is his acquisition of this
knowledge which transforms Apollo into a god. In symbolic terms, the transformation of Apollo
into a god means that the poet Keats has attained ripeness and maturity. So far Keats had only
been theoretically talking about the strife and the agonies of the human heart; but now he has
come into a direct contact with those aspects, of human life. Like Apollo, Keats now “dies into
life”.

139
Certain Other Features of an Epic in “Hyperion”

Then there are certain other features of this poem which give it the character of an epic.
There is an invocation to the Muse at the beginning of Book III. Invocations are generally a part
of the machinery of an epic poem. Then there is a long passage in which the various gods and
goddesses are named and briefly described and individualized. This passage reminds us of the
catalogue of warships in Homer’s Iliad. The description of the fallen Titans in this poem reminds
us of the description of the fallen angels in Milton’s Paradise Lost. The conference of the Titans
is akin to the conference of the angels in that poem. Enceladus, like Moloch in Paradise Lost,
urges open war; while Oceanus, like Belial in Paradise Lost, stands for more moderate
measures. And there are several other points of contact between this poem and Paradise
Lost. Besides, Keats’s poem moves within all the three worlds. The fallen Titans are hiding in a
cave, that is, in the under-world; Hyperion is described as still ruling his planet of the sun in the
sky; while Apollo is described as dwelling on an island in this world.
Epic Similes
Another important feature of Hyperion is the use of epic similes by Keats. A famous
simile is the one found in the passage which describes the tall oak trees dreaming all night
without a stir. Thea’s words to Saturn came and went like a gust of wind blowing suddenly
through those oak trees which are regarded by the poet as “green-robed senators of mighty
robes”. Another epic smile is found in the passage where the noise heard from the immortals
when a god proceeds to make a speech is compared to “the roar of bleak-grown pines”.
In Praise of “Hyperion”
Hyperion has received some glowing tributes from poets and critics. Byron
said: ‘‘Hyperion seems actually inspired by the Titans and is as sublime as Aeschylus.” Shelley
said: “If Hyperion be not grand poetry, none has been produced by our contemporaries.”
Cazamian writes:“Hyperion is an epic poem in which Keats, competing with Milton on a footing
of equality, set out to relate the celestial revolutions of pagan mythology, as didMilton the
Christian cycle of a paradise lost and regained. Scarcely outlined as it is, already arresting by
the vastness of conception which it promises by its visions of a gigantic and primitive world, this
work stands out in wondrous majesty.” Another critic describes it as “one of the grandest poems
in our language and in its grandeur one of the most spontaneous”. According to yet another
critic “no English poem of any” length since Milton—complete or fragmentary—begins with a
more majestic sureness of phrase than Hyperion.”
A Fault of Structure
All this does not, however, mean that Hyperion is a perfect poem. It suffers from several
imperfections and faults. In the first place, there is a fault in the structure. The first two books
of the poem certainly form one compact unit. Here the poet sticks to the main line of the story.
There is no digression, and no deviation from the chief concern of the poem. Every single line is
relevant to the theme. But Book III marks a sudden and unexpected departure from the subject,
thus giving a jolt to our minds. Book III has not been integrated with the first two books of the
poem as it stands. Of course, if Keats have gone on with the poem and completed it, Book III
would too have fallen into its proper place. In that case, Keats would have picked up the thread
of the story where he left off at the end of Book II and, after describing some of the main episodes
of the war between the Titans and the Olympians retrospectively, he would have depicted the
conflict between Hyperion and the newly-deified Apollo, leading to Hyperion’s defeat. But as it

140
is, the reader cannot see any connection between the first two books and the third. There is thus
a discontinuity.
Too Much of the Miltonic Influence, Another Fault

Another fault of the poem is an excess of the Miltonic influence. The Miltonic influence
is certainly not altogether a fault because it is responsible for much of the majesty and grandeur
of the poem; but too much of the Miltonic influence is certainly a flaw. Keats himself realized
this and said that he had abandoned the poem because there were too many Miltonic inversions
in it and because he could not write in Milton’s artful humour.
Lack of Action
There is a lack of action in the poem. An epic deals with mighty deeds. But no mighty
deeds are performed in Hyperionas the poem stands. The mighty deeds lie either in the past or
in the future but none in the present poem. There are certainly some dramatic situations such as
Clymene’s experience and Apollo’s deification, but no heroic actions. This too is a weakness in
the poem. Besides, the epic strain of the first two books gives way to a lyrical note in the third.
This too is a flaw.
Other Faults, As Pointed Out by a Critic
At least one critic raises certain fundamental objections to the poem. According to him,
the poem begins with a premature sense of an ending. The poem emerges into a scene of inaction,
immobility, and silence. From the very beginning, then, Keats’s epic threatens to collapse under
an impossible contradiction. How can a narrative move beyond its origin when that origin is
itself both beginng and end. This critic also says that Keats portrays Saturn merely as a great
fragment. “Farest on forest” hung above Saturn’s head; Saturn’s old right hand lay nerveless
and listless; Saturn’s realmless eyes were closed; and Saturn’s head was bowed. Saturn is thus
a thing of fragments: parts of him are magnified, but never, the whole. This critic further says
that the state of speechlessness depicted at the beginning of the poem extends to the Titans
themselves. The poem produces an impression not of an Aeschylean sublimity of style but the
sublime immobility of death. However, it is not possible for us to agree with much of this
criticism.
In what way does Hyperion reflect Keats’s personal views about

himself as a poet?
The Autobiographical Value of the Portrayal of Apollo in Book III
We can read more than one meaning into the poem Hyperion (the first version
known as a “Fragment”). One way of looking at this poem is to regard it as an indirect
and allegorical treatment by Keats of himself in his character of a poet. Book 111 of the
poem, which deals with Apollo, is particularly autobiographical, but the first two Books
also have certain autobiographical elements in them. According to one reading of the
poem, Apollo and not Hyperion is the chief character in it.

141
Apollo is, after all, the god of poetry, and therefore the immortal poet. The portrayal of
Apollo must therefore have been determined completely by Keats’s own knowledge of
the poetic nature. In other words, in presenting the character of Apollo to us, Keats
had his own nature, and his own nature only, to draw upon for his material. The
legend about the Titans was rather vague, but the inward reality of Apollo had
nothing vague about it because Keats himself was the model for the portrayal of
Apollo. In Book III of Hyperion, Keats said all that he could possibly say at that point
of time concerning the poetic nature, and therefore concerning Apollo. And because he
said here whatever he could have said about the nature of Apollo and consequently
about himself as a poet, the poem is in one sense complete and not just a fragment. In
Book III Keats reveals the secret of the poetic nature, and therefore of his own nature
as a poem.Hyperion is therefore a complete poem. It can be understood wholly in and
for itself. It may be a fragment, but it is a finished fragment.
The Writing of “Hyperion”, An Escape From the Pains of Life
When Keats began to writeHyperion, he was in deep distress on account of the
continuing illness of his brother Tom, an illness which seemed to have reached its final
stage before killing the patient. Keats tried at that time to escaps from the pains of life
by creating a new world in his new poem. The greatest of those pains was, of course, the
continual watching of his brother’s lingering death. At the same time to watch Tom
moving towards death also meant a warning to him of his own premature end, because
he had returned from his tour of Scotland with the beginnings of consumption .in
himself. And then, to aggravate matter’s, there was the hostile criticism of his
poem Endymion,which too weighed heavily upon his mind. Yet another cause of anxiety
to him was his unsatisfied desire for a woman’s love. The only refuge from all these pains
could be a world of the imagination. And so he started writing Hyperion, the
mythological personalities of which would be a source of distraction and comfort to him.
However, he started writing the poem somewhat unwillingly because he knew that,
concerning the character and destiny of the poet-Apollo he was still in the condition of
“purgatory blind”. (He had used the phrase “purgatory blind” in one of his letters to
describe his mental condition of confusion and ignorance).
No Evidence of the Superiority of the Olympians Over the Titans
Hyperion begins with an elaborate description of the misery which god Saturn
experienced as a result of his defeat at the hands of the Olympians, a misery which
seemed to have almost paralyzed both his body and mind. Hyperion is one of the saddest
poems in English, but its sadness is not the icy chill of intellectual despair; it is the warm,
rich sadness of a suffering heart determined to control its pain. The poem throbs, even
though all its figures are divine and immortal, with “the still, sad music of
humanity.”[1] The characters in the poem, though divine and immortal, are essentially
human; their sufferings and anger are human, and their wisdom is human. Keats could
not help it. He was writing from his heart, of what he knew. The life of these Titans was
the life in which he himself was involved. That is why, although his story for its own

142
progress demanded that the defeated Titans should be inferior to the victorious
Olympians, yet no Olympian could be wiser, kinder, and more beautiful than Saturn.
That Saturn has been overthrown by other gods simply means the defeat of the wise,
kind, and beautiful by the wise, kind, and beautiful. That he should reconquer his throne
from the usurpers would be just another victory of good over good. Oceanus, indeed,
says that just as the Titans are far superior to Heaven and Earth, so the Olympians are
far superior to the Titans. According to Oceanus, there is a higher perfection than that
represented by the Titans, and that higher perfection is to be found in the Olympians.
The Titans have therefore to be succeeded by a power which is more beautiful and more
strong than they. That power (represented by Jove) is destined to surpass the Titans,
just as the Titans have surpassed the old darkness and chaos. Now, the speech made by
Oceanus is undoubtedly a noble utterance, but the poem itself does not confirm the views
expressed by Oceanus. Oceanus speaks about the new dynasty as being far more
beautiful and therefore more strong than the Titans, but when we consider the various
characters in the poem—Saturn, Rhea, Oceanus, Mnemosyne, and Clymene—we do not
think that any power can be more beautiful and therefore more strong than these
characters. Certainly we cannot conceive of a greater majesty than possessed by Saturn,
or of greater wisdom than is displayed by Oceanus, or of greater splendour than that of
Hyperion.
The Power of the True Poet Higher Than that of the Titans
The only one of the Olympians to appear actually before us in the poem is
Apollo. He is perhaps more beautiful than the dethroned Titans, but he has had no hand
in their defeat. He is a poet, and a divine singer, while the Titans have no singer except
the child-like Clymene. Perhaps Keats is here saying that the only “power more strong
in beauty” to excel the Titans was the power of the true poet. Just as the pain of the Titans
is the pain of life itself, inflicted without cause and suffered without demerit, so all that
can be added to the sufferers is first a comprehension of that pain, and then an utterance
of that comprehension. Oceanus comprehends it, but he comprehends it only partially.
The “fresh perfection” which he visualizes will not be what he thinks it will be. Jove is
certainly not going to be nobler than Saturn, and Neptune will not be wiser than
Oceanus. There is only one “fresh perfection” which may come, and that is the perfection
of a vaster knowledge than that of Oceanus. Yet even that perfection Mnemosyne
already possesses.
Apollo, Only a Golden Voice and No More in Books I and II
Mnemosyne, like Apollo himself, does not enter into the poem until Book III. She
is an entirely new conception, just as Book III itself is an entirely new phase of the poem.
The first two Books belong together; they were written mainly before Tom’s death. The
thought of Apollo had been kept in the distance in those two Books; we know no more of
him than that Clymene had heard the calling of the golden singer’s name. Clymene,
giving an account of her experience, to the assembled Titans, says that she had heard a
voice sweeter than all tunes, crying: “Apollo, young Apollo, themorning-bright Apollo.”

143
Evidently, Clymene had heard Apollo’s own voice crying his own name. Apollo was just
shouting in a sweet voice his own name because lie was drunk with his own lovely
destiny. And that golden voice, described by Clymene, echoed amid the Titans and their
cave. In the first two Books of Hyperion,Apollo is nothing more than a golden voice. Till
Tom was dead, Apollo could be no more than a golden voice. What Keats was to know
and to be, could not be decided till after Tom’s death; and Apollo could know only what
Keats knew, and Apollo could be only what Keat, was.
Sorrow, Joy, and Sorrow Again, in the Beginning of Book III
The opening lines of Book III touch directly on Tom’s death, when Keats asks
the Muse to leave the Titans to their woes and to concern itself with a “solitary sorrow”
and a lonely grief. The death of Tom had undoubtedly brought great sorrow to Keats,
but the ordeal through which Keats had been going had at last ended. With the death of
his brother, Keats was able to breathe freely again. He had starved himself of life for his
brother’s sake; now life passed into him again, and for a moment into his poem. There
is a burst of new confidence in the lines where Keats calls upon all Nature to
commemorate the Father of all verse, namely Apollo. Let the rose glow intense and
warm the air, says Keats. Let the clouds float in voluptuous fleeces over the hills ; let the
shells turn rosy through all their mysterious interiors; “let the maid blush keenly as with
some warm kiss surprised” ; and let the island of Delos rejoice with its olives, poplars,
palms, and beeches. All this because “Apollo is once more the golden theme.” We cannot
miss the inrush of new and intoxicating life in these lines. Nothing could be a more gay
prelude to he coming of Apollo. And yet, after only ten lines more, Apollo appears
weeping not joyfully but in an agony of pain:
He listened and he wept, and his bright tears
Went trickling down the golden bow he held.
Nor were those tears such that any immortal could wipe them away, not even
Mnemosyne.
Keats’s Frustration in Love, the Reason Behind the Sorrow
What had happened was simply this, Tom had died; Keats had entered into life
again, and he had fallen in love. There had really been a moment of triumphant
confidence. He had begun to pour it into his poem, but for a moment only. The rapture
soon faded away because a new sorrow came to him. This sorrow came from his
knowledge that he could not hope for the fulfilment of his passionate love. “The burden
of the mystery” had descended upon him more terribly than ever. Morning-bright
Apollo’s fleeting moment of radiance was over; and therefore he wept.
Apollo’s Encounter with Mnemosyne
To the weeping Apollo comes a stern comforter, the goddess Mnemosyne who
had been guarding him, unseen by him and unknown to him. But Apollo had seen or
rather felt traces of her great presence; and now, as she stands before him, he cries to

144
her that he had seen the eternal calm of her eyes and had seen her face, adding that he
had perhaps not seen her eyes and face but dreamed of them. The goddess confirms
Apollo’s view that he had dreamed of her. She also says that, on waking up from his
dream, he had found a lyre by his side and that the exquisite music, never heard before
had come from that lyre when he had played on it. She then asks what sorrow it is which
is troubling him. She gives him some idea of who she is by saying that she is an ancient
power who has forsaken old and sacred thrones for his sake and for the sake of the new
loveliness which he represents.
The Two Phases in Keats’s Knowledge of Mnemosyne
Who is this Mnemosyne who has forsaken the old order for the new, of whose
face the young Apollo had dreamed and then woke up into a possession of a matchless
power of song. In the present poem there are two phrases in Keats’s knowledge of
Mnemosyne: the first is Apollo’s dream of her, by which he becomes a poet; the second
is Apollo’s waking sight of her, by which his whole body is convulsed and, changed by
“knowledge enormous”, he become a god. This only shows that Apollo and Keats himself
are essentially the same.
The Deification of Apollo
Mnemosyne means memory; and she has forsaken the old gods to guard the
new-born loveliness of Apollo. When Apollo sees her before him, he cries, in answer to
her question about his sorrow, that she already knows the cause of his sorrow and that
he need not tell her anything. However, he expresses his dissatisfaction with the kind of
the life that he is leading, especially because he cannot comprehend the mystery of the
universe. He wants to know which is the power controlling the forces of Nature. He
speak of his own “aching ignorance” and he asks the goddess to tell him why he keeps
raving about the groves on the island. To Apollo’s appeal in aching ignorance,
Mnemosyne makes no reply. Apollo looks at her face again, and the secret is revealed to
him. He reads a wonderful lesson in her silent face. In that face he reads names, deeds,
gray legends, dire events, rebellions, majesties, sovereign voices, agonies, creations and
destroyings. All this enormous knowledge makes a god of him; all this has the effect of
deifying him. He feels as if he had drunk some bright elixir and become immortal. The
poem ends with Keats’s description of the fierce convulsions through which Apollo goes
and as a result of which he “dies into life.” In other words, the poem ends with the
deification of Apollo. Apollo’s dreaming of Mnemosyne had made the boy Apollo a poet,
a lovely and unconcious singer. But his beholding her face to face has made of him a
great poet.
The Identification of Keats with Apollo
Apollo is Keats himself. In the pain of his death into life, brought upon him by
what he sees in the face of Mnemosyne, he had conquered that which he had sought
through the year of purgatory blind; he had conquered the lore of good and ill. For
Mnemosyne’s face contains all life, past, present, and future. She is the eternal existence

145
of the universe. She belongs to the new order as well as to the old because she is
immanent and ever-lasting; she is a pure mirror of what is—agonies, creations and
destroyings—and in that reflection what is revealed is what must be. And of her the boy
Keats had dreamed. She was “the vast idea” he had mentioned in his early poem Sleep
and Poetry. She had become “the mighty abstract idea of beauty in all things”; and Keats
had struggled through “purgatory blind” for a vision of her, face to face. Now he had
achieved what he sought, and knowledge enormous made a god of him, through the pain
of a death in life and a second birth.
A Symbolic Emergence of Keats as a Mature Poet
And so the first Hyperion ends. Keats has become a great and true poet. The
great poet is not a mystic; he is a doer, a maker, a revealer, a creator. The continuation
of Hyperion is all the later poems which Keats wrote, the few that were written and the
many that he could not write on account of his premature death. Those which were
written are among the very loveliest and profoundest poems in the English language.
They are all the great odes, Lamia, and the second Hyperion. And they were only a
beginning, and in Keats’s own opinion a very small beginning. If Keats had lived, he
would certainly have equaled Shakespeare, and he might even have turned to the
writing of dramas and met the great Bard on his own ground.
Hyperion’s Apprehensions, a Reflection of Keats’s Own
There is something autobiographical in Keats’s portrayal of the sun-god
Hyperion also. Hyperion is represented as feeling very apprehensive about his future.
He yet retains his sovereignty over his planet of the sun but, having seen certain bad
omens, he has an uneasy feeling that he might be overthrown. In this state of mind he
asks himself if he is going to lose this “haven” of his rest, this “cradle of his glory”, this
“soft clime”, this “calm luxuriance of blissful light”. He asks himself if he is going to lose
his “lucent empire”, and if he is going to bid good-bye to “the blaze, the spelendour, and
the symmetry.” Now, the apprehensions and fears of Hyperion in a way reflect Keats’s
own fears and anxieties. His brother Tom died in the course of his writing this poem. He
had been much oppressed by his financial worries. His poem Endymion had been
bitterly criticized and condemned by reviewers. His love for Fanny Brawne did not seem
to be bearing any fruit. His own health had greatly deteriorated, and he was already
apprehending a premature death. All these facts of his life had made him feel miserable.
In the misery of the Titans, and especially in Hyperion’s misery, may be seen Keats’s
own misery.

146
“The Fall of Hyperion”: An Introduction by John Keats
Cast in the Form of a Dream

The second Hyperion is cast in the form of a dream, and the opening describes
.this dream and its setting. It begins with a short prologue which affords an excellent
example of the new tense and muscular verse:
Fanatics have their dreams, wherewith they weave

A paradise for a sect; the savage, too,
From forth the loftiest fashion of his sleep
Guesses at Heaven! Pity these have not
Traced upon vellum or wild Indian leaf
The shadows of melodious utterance,
But bare of laurel they live, dream and die;
For Poesy alone can tell her dreams,
With the fine spell of words alone can save
Imagination from the sable chain
And dumb enchantment.
This is an attempt to define the position of poetry. The poet has his dreams in common
with other men, but he alone is able to secure them from oblivion. (Again the thought of
the Ode To A Grecian Urn—only art can endure.) And the poet’s dream differs from the
fanatic’s, because it is for the world, the fanatic’s only for a sect.
The Dream and the Poet’s Encounter with a Priestess
The dream that Keats sees begins in a wood where the poet eats of the fruits and
falls into a deep, sleep to find himself, when he wakes up, in a vast shrine. There are
steps leading up to an altar. As the poet approaches the steps, the veiled priestess
addresses him:
If thou canst not ascend
These steps, die on the marble where thou art.
When he asks the priestess to explain the mysteries around him,

147
This is the theme, already familiar in Sleep and Poetry and in the letters: that the poet
must not rest in poetical dreams but must share the sorrows of humanity. In the lines
that follow, the theme is carried further. The actively virtuous arc not to be found in the
shrine; they are working in the world. The poet is here because of his weakness, because
he is a dreamer. The priestess goes on to distinguish the poet and the mere dreamer:
The one pours out a balm upon the world,
The other vexes it.
Moneta’s “Wan Face”
She then reveals that the temple is Saturn’s, the only remaining shrine of the old
gods, and she is Moneta, the sole remaining priestess. (Moneta is the Latin name of
Mnemosyne.) Then Moneta unveils herself, and is thus described:
Then I saw a wan face,
Not pin’d by human sorrows, but bright-blanch’d
By an immortal sickness which kills not;
…………………………………………………
………………deathwards progressing
To no death was that visage, it had pass’d
The lily and the snow ; and beyond these
I must not think now, though I saw that face.
But for her eyes I should have fled away.
The poet asks to be shown the hidden story that lies behind the mysterious temple. She
agrees to reveal it to him, and the story of Hyperion and the Titans, much as it was
narrated in the first version of the poem, then begins.
The Place of the Poet in the World
This is Keats’s last attempt to define the place of the poet in the world. The poet
is less than the man of active virtue, and Keats is still absorbed by the contrast between
the realm of Flora and the other kingdom that he suspects to lie beyond. He has still not
crossed the boundary, but he knows more of what to expect on the journey. It is notable
how much of Keats’s poetry is about poetry, its function, its glories, and its limitations.
It is as though lie is perpetually trying to find a bridge between art and life, but is
perpetually led back to art itself. In The Fall of Hyperion, Keats draws two distinctions:
one between the practical and the visionary mind; and the other between the creative
visionary (the poet) and the mere dreamer who vexes the world with visions that he can
do nothing to transmute into reality.
The Symbolism in “The Fall of Hyperion”
The Fall of Hyperion was his last effort to integrate his faculties and impulses,
and to set forth his conception of the poet and the poet’s function in the world.
InHyperion the meaning of Apollo’s spiritual birth-pangs had been left somewhat
obscure; the objective manner of presentation was not natural to one who had always
written directly out of his own feelings, and perhaps he did not quite know what to do

148
with the god when he had got him. The narrative in The Pall of Hyperionseems to carry
out the general intention ofHyperion, but, by the late summer of 1819, Keats’s failing
health, the prolonged fever of his love for Fanny Brawne, pecuniary troubles, perhaps
most of all the conviction that the topmost heights of poetry were not to be won by a
divided soul, such causes as these had deepened and embittered his despair over himself,
his past and his future. In the symbolism of the garden, the temple, and the shrine, we
perhaps have another variation on the three Wardsworthian stages of development,
from sensuous pleasure to humanitarian concern for the world. But the sketch of poetic
evolution is not now, as inSleep and Poetry, partly wishful prophecy. Keats is here
looking back on what seem to him to be the facts of his brief career, and he condemns
himself, with harsh sincerity, for having dwelt in an ivory tower, for having given to
men the illusive balm of dreams, whereas true poets, by intense effort, seize upon the
reality which is not illusive. To them, as to active benefactors of humanity, the miseries
of the world are misery, and will not let them rest.
The Schism in Keats’s Thinking
One need not be a sentimentalist to feel the profound personal tragedy not only
in the self-laceration of this last effort to feel the giant agony of the world, but also in
Keats’s turning aside from The Fall of Hyperion to enjoy a last serene “sensation” in To
Autumn. We do not endorse his condemnation of a large part of his work, but we can
understand his attitude, can even see that the whole course of his development made it
inevitable. As he said himself, the genius of poetry must work out its own salvation in a
man, and we cannot guess, if he had health and some measure of contentment, what
would have been his ultimate solution and achievement. His house was. most of the time,
divided against itself, but his consciousness of the fissure, his unceasing endeavour to
solve the problem of sense and knowledge, art and humanity, are in themselves an index
of his stature. No other English poet of the century had his poetic endowment, and no
other strove so intensely to harmonize what may be called the Apollonian and the
Faustian ideals of poetry. However high one’s estimate of what he wrote, one may really
think that Keats was greater than his poems.

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Some Observations by Douglas Bush

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All His Great Poetry, Written During Three Years

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Keats’s Development as a Poet

The Mature Work

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ofEndymion, but in the strong, compact, forward-moving couplets of Dryden’s Fables;

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…..magic casements, opening on the foam

Keats’s Aestheticism or Keats as a Poet of Escape

Keats’s Hatred of Didacticism

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An Intellectual Side to His Aestheticism

The Greek Note in Keats’s Poetry/ Hellenism

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Keats’s Inborn, Temperamental “Greekness”

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Sidney Colvin’s Analysis of Keats’s Hellenism

Keats’s Treatment of Nature

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On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept

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The Medieval Elements in “The Eve of St. Agnes”

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A thing of beauty is a joy for ever.

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And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

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Keats’s Pictorial Quality

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The Poem, a Test of Keats’s Poetic Powers

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He sinks adown a solitary glen;

Come then, Sorrow!

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Beauties and Faults Mingled Together in the Poem