Bibliography

John Keats

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Keats, Wikipedia, USA, 2007.

John Keats

http://www.john-keats.com/, Thilo v. Pape, Britain, 2000.

John Keats

John Keats’ early life has a clear influence on many of his poems. The hardships he experienced as a young boy, witnessing both the death of his father, mother and brother in individual circumstances, set the mood in many of his most melancholy poems. ‘When I have fears that I may cease to be, before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain.’ After the death of his mother, Keats’ grandmother gave custody of he and his siblings to two joint guardians. It was on their encouragement that Keats joined surgical school. However as Keats’ surgical training progressed, he found himself increasingly disinterested with the world of surgery and more engrossed with the world of literature. During his trips to Isle of Wight and Winchester in this time, Keats’ wrote some of his best loved works, including Isabella, St. Agnes’ Eve and Lamia. It was here he also wrote sections of Hyperion and small details of the five-act poem, Otho The Great.

John Keats found himself the guardian of his young brother, Tom Keats, after his grandmothers’ death in 1818. While caring for the boy, who was afflicted with tuberculosis, Keats wrote the poem Endymion. After its completion Keats went on a hiking trip with new found friend, Charles Brown, it was at this time that Keats first became aware of his own symptoms of Tuberculosis. The advanced symptoms forced Keats to abandon the trip and he returned to find his brother much worse and his poem harshly criticized by the press. After his brothers’ death in December 1818, Keats moved to London to live in the house of his friend, Charles Brown. It was here he made the acquaintance of sixteen year old, Fanny Brawne, who he quickly fell in love with. However the relationship bought more angst than joy for Keats, who often referred to the affair in many of his poems, and in particular in Ode to Fanny, as an unrequited love, which was tormenting in its lack of expressed mutual feeling. ‘I know it – and to know it is despair, to one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny! Whose heart goes fluttering for you every where, nor, when away you roam, dare keep its wretched home, love, love alone, his pains severe and many.’

When Keats’ health began to deteriorate in 1820, he listened to the advice of doctors and moved to Italy to escape the cold London winter. However his illness had by this time progressed too far for Keats to experience any small respite from the move and he died in 1821.

Keats’ final wish, to have ‘Here lies one, whose name was writ in water.’ engraved on his headstone was fulfilled and Keats’ rests today in the protestant cemetery in Rome.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O WHAT can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms!
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel’s granary is full,
And the harvest’s done.
I see a lily on thy brow
With anguish moist and fever dew,
And on thy cheeks a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful – a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look’d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long,
For sidelong would she bend, and sing
A faery’s song.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew,
And sure in language strange she said –
«I love thee true.»

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she wept, and sigh’d fill sore,
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep,
And there I dream’d – Ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream’d
On the cold hill’s side.

I saw pale kings and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
They cried – «La Belle Dame sans Merci
Hath thee in thrall!»
I saw their starved lips in the gloam,
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke and found me here,
On the cold hill’s side.
And this is why I sojourn here,
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither’d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Keats’ poem La Belle Dame Sans Merci uses fantasy to illustrate the pain of unrequited love. The witch Keats has created, to steal the heart of the knight, is enchanting but cold, luring the knight into a false sense of security before leaving him with a broken heart and wasted dreams. ‘And I awoke and found me here, on the cold hill’s side, and this is why I sojourn here, alone and palely loitering.’ This is a reference to Keats’ own love life and the emotional separation that he felt was often apparent in his wife’s regard for him. The poem is effective because of the dramatic imagery it creates; of a young, lovesick knight, lost on a hill side while his love remains indifferent to him and more emotionally interested and moved by the interests of other men. The occurring theme in many of Keats’ poems is of his inability to retain affection successfully, or to supply enough affection to sustain that of his love ‘And there I shut her wild wild eyes with kisses four. And there she lulled me asleep, and there I dream’d – Ah! woe betide! The latest dream I ever dream’d on the cold hill’s side’.

I Had a Dove

I Had a Dove
I HAD a dove and the sweet dove died;
And I have thought it died of grieving:
O, what could it grieve for? Its feet were tied,
With a silken thread of my own hand’s weaving;
Sweet little red feet! why should you die –
Why should you leave me, sweet bird! why?
You liv’d alone in the forest-tree,
Why, pretty thing! would you not live with me?
I kiss’d you oft and gave you white peas;
Why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?

Keats’ poem I Had a Dove represents Keats’ own selfish love and his lack of understanding of the complex elements that combine to create the healthy love he craves. The dove Keats’ refers to, is symbolic of the goodness and peace Keats’ has found in his object of affection, which in capturing for his own, Keats unwittingly destroys in his selfish care ‘Its feet were tied, with a silken thread of my own hands weaving’. The poem represents Keats’ own struggle with love in an attempt to understand it so that he might succeed in loving unselfishly and completely, a fate which he often describes as eluding him in many of his poems. Keats recognizes the fact that he is to blame for the death of his beloved dove, but throughout the poem struggles to comprehend why his love was not enough for the bird to survive ‘I kissed you oft and gave you white peas, why not live sweetly, as in the green trees?’