Tribute to Keats (February)
In this Newsletter
Poem of the Month
Image of the Month
John Keats anniversary
Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites book summary
Poem of the Month
John Keats (1795–1821)
Ode to a Nightingale
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
’Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,
That thou, light-wingèd Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
O for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delvèd earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country-green,
Dance, and Provençal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South!
Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
And purple-stainèd mouth;
That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
And with thee fade away into the forest dim ––
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;
Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs,
Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
And leaden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmèd darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
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.
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call’d him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.
Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that ofttimes hath
Charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is famed to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music: — do I wake or sleep?
Image of the Month
Joseph Severn, Keats listening to the nightingale (c. 1845)
John Keats anniversary
John Keats
Romantic Poet
31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821
Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites: a selection of poetry illustrated by Pre-Raphaelite artists and their successors
Edited by Eugenia and Quentin Russell
Illustrated in colour
John Keats (1795-1821) drawn by his friend Charles Armitage Brown (1819)
Following his early death at the age of only 25, John Keats became one of the most influential poets of the 19th century, both for fellow poets and for artists. His quest for the ideal of poetic beauty led him to forge an original and powerful voice full of melancholy and a constant longing, which won him the adoration of his peers and of successive generations. While many later poets acknowledged a debt to his poetic themes and form and his reflections on the relationship between the real and ideal, his narrative poems, akin to Tennyson’s later medieval poems, fuelled the imagination of a whole generation of artists.
The Pre-Raphaelites in particular saw in him a kindred radical spirit and were moved by verses and his painterly poetic vision. Both William Holman Hunt and Arthur Hughes depicted scenes from his The Eve of St Agnes and similarly Endymion, Isabella or the Pot of Basil, Lamia and La Belle Dame sans Merci inspired a number of works by the likes of John Everett Millais, John William Waterhouse, George Frederick Watts and Walter Crane.
In this volume for the first time Keats’ poems, including in addition to the above narrative poems his well-known To Autumn and Ode to a Nightingale, are placed together with the paintings they inspired plus some of the illustrations to his works.
Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites | Lone Fox Publishing
Some of the most well-known verses of the influential Romantic poet John Keats are matched with the Pre-Raphaelite paintings and artworks they inspired. With colour and black & white illustrations Keats and the Pre-Raphaelites: a selection of poetry illustrated by Pre-Raphaelite artists and their successors Edited by Eugenia and Quentin RussellFollowing his early death at the age of only 25, John Keats became one of the most influential poets of the 19th century, both for fellow poets and f...
Some of the most well-known verses of the influential Romantic poet John Keats are matched with the Pre-Raphaelite paintings and artworks they inspired. With colour and black & white illustrations