In Keats’ ‘Endymion’ the poet is still immature but shows great advancement. ‘Endymion’ is sensuous, imaginative and fanciful. The poet has attempted to unite the real and the ideal. To quote him from ‘Endymion’:
“A thing of beauty is joy forever.”
Keats’ third volume of poems included the famous ‘Isabella’, ‘Lamia’, ‘Hyperion’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ and among others were his odes and sonnets. His most famous odes are: ‘To Nightingale’, ‘To Autumn’, ‘On Indolence’, ‘On a Grecian Urn’, ‘To Psyche’ and ‘To Melancholy’. He has written 61 sonnets including ‘When I Have Fears that I may Cease to be’, ‘On Reading Chapman’s Homer’, ‘Bright Star’.
A marked characteristic of Keats is his appropriateness of wording. For illustrating the magical use of compound expressions one may cite “soft-conched”, “sapphire-regioned” and “high-sorrowful”; for beautiful single epithets, “wailful choir”, “vendurous grooms”, “sunburnt mirth”; for memorable phrases and immortal lines, “fast fading violets covered up in leaves” OR “Magic casements opening on the foam/Of perilious seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
Another quality of his works is that of sheer music. He was one of the most musical poets. When we come to the great odes like ‘To Nightingale’, ‘On a Grecian Urn’, ‘To Psyche’ and ‘To Autumn’, they have a musical effect which is unsurpassed in English lyric verse.
There was a Hellenic spirit in the works of Keats. In Shelley’s words, “Keats was a Greek.” The symmetry, simplicity, economy of ornament and subordination of parts to the whole of Greek art is most plain in the odes, ‘On Indolence’ and ‘On a Grecian Urn’.
Keats was also a nature poet. To Wordsworth Nature is a living being with the power to influence man for good or ill. Shelley, on the other hand, is not a moralist but an idealist. He portrays a beauty, which is not of the Earth. Keats neither gives a moral life to Nature, nor attempts to pass beyond her familiar manifestations. His aim, perhaps the highest of all, is to see and to render Nature as she is.
Known as a poet of love, sensuousness and beauty, Keats remains one of the immortals of literature.
“A thing of beauty is joy forever.”
Keats’ third volume of poems included the famous ‘Isabella’, ‘Lamia’, ‘Hyperion’, ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ and among others were his odes and sonnets. His most famous odes are: ‘To Nightingale’, ‘To Autumn’, ‘On Indolence’, ‘On a Grecian Urn’, ‘To Psyche’ and ‘To Melancholy’. He has written 61 sonnets including ‘When I Have Fears that I may Cease to be’, ‘On Reading Chapman’s Homer’, ‘Bright Star’.
A marked characteristic of Keats is his appropriateness of wording. For illustrating the magical use of compound expressions one may cite “soft-conched”, “sapphire-regioned” and “high-sorrowful”; for beautiful single epithets, “wailful choir”, “vendurous grooms”, “sunburnt mirth”; for memorable phrases and immortal lines, “fast fading violets covered up in leaves” OR “Magic casements opening on the foam/Of perilious seas, in faery lands forlorn.”
Another quality of his works is that of sheer music. He was one of the most musical poets. When we come to the great odes like ‘To Nightingale’, ‘On a Grecian Urn’, ‘To Psyche’ and ‘To Autumn’, they have a musical effect which is unsurpassed in English lyric verse.
There was a Hellenic spirit in the works of Keats. In Shelley’s words, “Keats was a Greek.” The symmetry, simplicity, economy of ornament and subordination of parts to the whole of Greek art is most plain in the odes, ‘On Indolence’ and ‘On a Grecian Urn’.
Keats was also a nature poet. To Wordsworth Nature is a living being with the power to influence man for good or ill. Shelley, on the other hand, is not a moralist but an idealist. He portrays a beauty, which is not of the Earth. Keats neither gives a moral life to Nature, nor attempts to pass beyond her familiar manifestations. His aim, perhaps the highest of all, is to see and to render Nature as she is.
Known as a poet of love, sensuousness and beauty, Keats remains one of the immortals of literature.
1 comment:
Keats was certainly a brilliant poet. He struggled with being accepted, was never seen as being "educated" enough, but he shows you a beautiful world and hw wonderous the Greek world can be to foreign eyes (and when it comes to the Greek world, we all have foreign eyes).
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