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    Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems
    Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems
    Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems
    Ebook110 pages1 hour

    Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems

    By John Keats

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    Arguably the greatest of all the English Romantic poets, John Keats left behind him an astonishingly large body of work almost as remarkable for its maturity as for its beauty.

    Whether in longer narrative works like 'The Eve of St Agnes', or in such sonnets as 'On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer', or in magnificent odes like those 'To a Nightingale' and 'To Autumn', his verse resonates with lyricism and with sensuous imagery, however melancholy his tone or his subject. His finest poems are among the greatest in the language; almost all of them strike a chord in the heart of even the most jaded reader.

    This compact selection includes many of Keats's greatest shorter poems, as well as extracts from his longer works.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMichael O'Mara
    Release dateNov 3, 2016
    ISBN9781782437154
    Keats: 'Ode to a Nightingale' and Other Poems
    Author

    John Keats

    John Keats was born in London in 1795. He and his siblings were orphaned at a young age - his father died in a riding accident in 1804 and his mother died six years later. Keats then left Enfield school to train as an apothecary and a surgeon but he was to leave his profession to dedicate his time to poetry. His first volume, Poems, was published in 1817 and only two more volumes, in 1818 and 1820, were published during his lifetime. In 1818 he fell in love with his neighbour Fanny Brawne, but he broke off their engagement due to his increasing ill health and lack of funds. In 1820 he moved to Italy where he died a year later of tuberculosis, the disease that claimed his mother and his brother Tom.

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      Book preview

      Keats - John Keats

      work.

      Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.

      (1817)

      Glory and loveliness have pass’d away;

      For if we wander out in early morn,

      No wreathèd incense do we see upborne

      Into the east, to meet the smiling day:

      No crowd of nymphs soft voic’d and young, and gay,

      In woven baskets bringing ears of corn,

      Roses, and pinks, and violets, to adorn

      The shrine of Flora in her early May.

      But there are left delights as high as these.

      And I shall ever bless my destiny,

      That in a time when under pleasant trees

      Pan is no longer sought, I feel a free

      A leafy luxury, seeing I could please,

      With these poor offerings, a man like thee.

      How many bards gild the lapses of time!

      (1817)

      How many bards gild the lapses of time!

      A few of them have ever been the food

      Of my delighted fancy, – I could brood

      Over their beauties, earthly, or sublime:

      And often, when I sit me down to rhyme,

      These will in throngs before my mind intrude;

      But no confusion, no disturbance rude

      Do they occasion; ’tis a pleasing chime.

      So the unnumber’d sounds that evening store;

      The songs of birds – the whisp’ring of the leaves –

      The voice of waters – the great bell that heaves

      With solemn sound, – and thousand others more,

      That distance of recognizance bereaves,

      Make pleasing music, and not wild uproar.

      On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer

      (1817)

      Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,

      And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;

      Round many western islands have I been

      Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.

      Oft of one wide expanse had I been told

      That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne:

      Yet did I never breathe its pure serene

      Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:

      Then felt I like some watcher of the skies

      When a new planet swims into his ken;

      Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes

      He stared at the Pacific – and all his men

      Look’d at each other with a wild surmise –

      Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

      To Chatterton

      (1817)

      O Chatterton! how very sad thy fate!

      Dear child of sorrow – son of misery!

      How soon the film of death obscured that eye,

      Whence Genius mildly flashed, and high debate.

      How soon that voice, majestic and elate,

      Melted in dying numbers! Oh! how nigh

      Was night to thy fair morning. Thou didst die

      A half-blown flow’ret which cold blasts amate.

      But this is past: thou art among the stars

      Of highest heaven: to the rolling spheres

      Thou sweetest singest: nought thy hymning mars,

      Above the ingrate world and human fears.

      On earth the good man base detraction bars

      From thy fair name, and waters it with tears.

      A Thing of Beauty is a Joy For Ever, from Book 1 of Endymion

      (1818)

      A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

      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.

      Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing

      A flowery band to bind us to the earth,

      Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

      Of noble natures, of the gloomy days,

      Of all the unhealthy and o’er-darken’d ways

      Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all,

      Some shape of beauty moves away the pall

      From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon,

      Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon

      For simple sheep; and such are daffodils

      With the green world they live in; and clear rills

      That for themselves a cooling covert make

      ’Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake,

      Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:

      And such too is the grandeur of the dooms

      We have imagined for the mighty dead;

      All lovely tales that we have heard or read:

      An endless fountain of immortal drink,

      Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.

      Nor do we merely feel these essences

      For one short hour; no, even as the trees

      That whisper round a temple become soon

      Dear as the temple’s self, so does the moon,

      The passion poesy, glories infinite,

      Haunt us till they become a cheering light

      Unto our souls, and bound to us so fast

      That, whether there be shine or gloom o’ercast,

      They always must be with us, or we die.

      Therefore, ’tis with full happiness that I

      Will trace the story of Endymion.

      The very music of the name has gone

      Into my being, and

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