Outlines of English and American Literature John Keats byLong, William J.
A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness, but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams and health and quiet breathing.
The above lines, from Endymion, reflect the ideal of the young
singer whom we rank with the best poets of the nineteenth century. Unlike
other romanticists of that day, he seems to have lived for poetry alone and
to have loved it for its own sake, as we love the first spring flowers. His
work was shamefully treated by reviewers; it was neglected by the public;
but still he wrote, trying to make each line perfect, in the spirit of
those medieval workmen who put their hearts into a carving that would rest
on some lofty spire far above the eyes of men. To reverence beauty wherever
he found it, and then in gratitude to produce a new work of beauty which
should live forever,--that was Keats's only aim. It is the more wonderful
in view of his humble origin, his painful experience, his tragic end.
Life
Only twenty-five years of life, which included seven years of
uncongenial tasks, and three of writing, and three of wandering in
search of health,--that sums up the story of Keats. He was born in
London; he was the son of a hostler; his home was over the stable;
his playground was the dirty street. The family prospered, moved to
a better locality, and the children were sent to a good school.
Then the parents died, and at fifteen Keats was bound out to a
surgeon and apothecary. For four years he worked as an apprentice,
and for three years more in a hospital; then, for his heart was
never in the work, he laid aside his surgeon's kit, resolving never
to touch it again.
Two Poetic Ideals
Since childhood he had been a reader, a dreamer, but not till a
volume of Spenser's Faery Queen was put into his hands did
he turn with intense eagerness to poetry. The influence of that
volume is seen in the somewhat monotonous sweetness of his early
work. Next he explored the classics (he had read Virgil in the
original, but he knew no Greek), and the joy he found in Chapman's
translation of Homer is reflected in a noble sonnet. From that time
on he was influenced by two ideals which he found in Greek and
medieval literature, the one with its emphasis on form, the other
with its rich and varied coloring.
During the next three years Keats published three small volumes,
his entire life's work. These were brutally criticized by literary
magazines; they met with ridicule at the hands of Byron, with
indifference on the part of Scott and Wordsworth. The pathetic
legend that the poet's life was shortened by this abuse is still
repeated, but there is little truth in it. Keats held manfully to
his course, having more weighty things than criticism to think
about. He was conscious that his time was short; he was in love
with his Fannie Brawne, but separated from her by illness and
poverty; and, like the American poet Lanier, he faced death across
the table as he wrote. To throw off the consumption which had
fastened upon him he tried to live in the open, making walking
trips in the Lake Region; but he met with rough fare and returned
from each trip weaker than before. He turned at last to Italy,
dreading the voyage and what lay beyond. Night fell as the ship put
to sea; the evening star shone clear through the storm clouds, and
Keats sent his farewell to life and love and poetry in the sonnet
beginning:
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art.
He died soon after his arrival in Rome, in 1821. Shelley, who had
hailed Keats as a genius, and who had sent a generous invitation to
come and share his home, commemorated the poet's death and the
world's loss in Adonais, which ranks with Milton's
Lycidas, Tennyson's In Memoriam and Emerson's
Threnody among the great elegiac poems of our literature.
The Work of Keats
The first small volume of Keats (Poems, 1817)
seems now like an experiment. The part of that experiment which we cherish
above all others is the sonnet "On Chapman's Homer," which should be read
entire for its note of joy and for its fine expression of the influence of
classic poetry. The second volume, Endymion, may be regarded as a
promise. There is little reality in the rambling poem which gives title to
the volume (the story of a shepherd beloved of a moon-goddess), but the
bold imagery of the work, its Spenserian melody, its passages of rare
beauty,--all these speak of a true poet who has not yet quite found himself
or his subject. A third volume, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes
and Other Poems (1820), is in every sense a fulfillment, for it
contains a large proportion of excellent poetry, fresh, vital, melodious,
which improves with years, and which carries on its face the stamp of
permanency.
His Best Poems
The contents of this little volume may be arranged, not very accurately, in
three classes, In the first are certain poems that by their perfection of
form show the Greek or classic spirit. Best known of these poems are the
fragment "Hyperion," with its Milton-like nobility of style, and "Lamia,"
which is the story of an enchantress whom love transforms into a beautiful
woman, but who quickly vanishes because of her lover's too great
curiosity,--a parable, perhaps, of the futility of science and philosophy,
as Keats regarded them.
Of the poems of the second class, which reflect old medieval legends, "The
Pot of Basil," "The Eve of St. Agnes" and "La Belle Dame sans Merci" are
praised by poets and critics alike. "St. Agnes," which reflects a vague
longing rather than a story, is the best known; but "La Belle Dame" may
appeal to some readers as the most moving of Keats's poems. The essence of
all old metrical romances is preserved in a few lines, which have an added
personal interest from the fact that they may reveal something of the
poet's sad love story.
In the third class are a few sonnets and miscellaneous poems, all permeated
by the sense of beauty, showing in every line the genius of Keats and his
exquisite workmanship. The sonnets "On the Sea," "When I have Fears," "On
the Grasshopper and Cricket" and "To Sleep"; the fragment beginning "In a
drear-nighted December"; the marvelous odes "On a Grecian Urn," "To a
Nightingale" and "To Autumn," in which he combines the simplicity of the
old classics with the romance and magic of medieval writers,--there are no
works in English of a similar kind that make stronger appeal to our ideal
of poetry and of verbal melody. Into the three stanzas of "Autumn," for
example, Keats has compressed the vague feelings of beauty, of melancholy,
of immortal aspiration, which come to sensitive souls in the "season of
mists and mellow fruitfulness." It may be compared, or rather contrasted,
with another poem on the same subject which voices the despair in the heart
of the French poet Verlaine, who hears "the sobbing of the violins of
autumn":
Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.
Keats: An Essay of Criticism
Beyond recommending a few of his poems for
their beauty, there is really so little to be said of Keats that critics
are at their wit's end to express their appreciation. So we read of Keats's
"pure aestheticism," his "copious perfection," his "idyllic visualization,"
his "haunting poignancy of feeling," his "subtle felicities of diction,"
his "tone color," and more to the same effect. Such criticisms are
doubtless well meant, but they are harder to follow than Keats's
"Endymion"; and that is no short or easy road of poesy. Perhaps by trying
more familiar ways we may better understand Keats, why he appeals so
strongly to poets, and why he is so seldom read by other people.
The Sense of Beauty
The first characteristic of the man was his love for every beautiful thing
he saw or heard. Sometimes the object which fascinated him was the
widespread sea or a solitary star; sometimes it was the work of man, the
product of his heart and brain attuned, such as a passage from Homer, a
legend of the Middle Ages, a vase of pure lines amid the rubbish of a
museum, like a bird call or the scent of violets in a city street. Whatever
the object that aroused his sense of beauty, he turned aside to stay with
it a while, as on the byways of Europe you will sometimes see a man lay
down his burden and bare his head before a shrine that beckons him to pray.
With this reverence for beauty Keats had other and rarer qualities: the
power to express what he felt, the imagination which gave him beautiful
figures, and the taste which enabled him to choose the finest words, the
most melodious phrases, wherewith to reflect his thought or mood or
emotion.
Such was the power of Keats, to be simple and reverent in the presence of
beauty, and to give his feeling poetic or imaginative expression. In
respect of such power he probably had no peer in English literature. His
limitations were twofold: he looked too exclusively on the physical side of
beauty, and he lived too far removed from the common, wholesome life of
men.
Sense and Soul
To illustrate our criticism: that man whom we saw by the wayside shrine
acknowledged the presence of some spiritual beauty and truth, the beauty of
holiness, the ineffable loveliness of God. So the man who trains a child,
or gives thanks for a friend, or remembers his mother, is always at heart a
lover of beauty,--the moral beauty of character, of comradeship, of
self-sacrifice. But the poetry of Keats deals largely with outward matters,
with form, color, melody, odors, with what is called "sensuous" beauty
because it delights our human senses. Such beauty is good, but it is not
supreme. Moreover, the artist who would appeal widely to men must by
sympathy understand their whole life, their mirth as well as their sorrow,
their days of labor, their hours of play, their moments of worship. But
Keats, living apart with his ideal of beauty, like a hermit in his cell,
was able to understand and to voice only one of the profound interests of
humanity. For this reason, and because of the deep note of sadness which
sounds through all his work like the monotone of the sea, his exquisite
poems have never had any general appreciation. Like Spenser, who was his
first master, he is a poet's poet.
