Keats poems Flashcards
O Solitude
CONTENT
- May 1816
- Petrarchan sonnet (ABBAx2 and CDDCDC)
- octave: sais he wanted to connect with nature rather than the squalid ugly cities
- sestet: although being in solitude in nature is nice, he’d like a ‘kindred spirit’
QUOTES
- “murky buildings” (3) vs “river’s crystal swell” (5) = juxtaposition, suggests clarity in nature unlike murky/dirty cities
- “vigils” “bliss” “spirits” (6-14) = religious semantic field, suggests reflection and ascendance in nature + perhaps comrades?
- “highest bliss of human-kind…two kindred spirits” = hyperbole, paradox, suggests the interest in fleeing to solitude/nature only to yearn for company
On first looking into Chapman’s Homer
CONTENT
- October 1816
- Petrarchan sonnet (ABBAx2 and CDCDCD)
- octave: said he’s read many books + heard abt the imaginative world of Homer
- sestet: after reading Chapman’s Homer, it spoke to him boldly + discovering new lands
QUOTES
- “realms of gold” “goodly states” “kingdoms seen” (1-2) = extended metaphor of literature/semantic field, suggests he’s a literary novice/imaginative travel thru literature
- “Yet did I never breathe its pure serene / Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:” (7-8) = consonance + assonance/assonance, elongates the line suggests immersed in writing + assonance in (8) turns up poem’s “volume”
- “like stout Cortez [with] eagle eyes” “Pacific” “Darien” = allusion/extended metaphor of exploration/discovery, suggests amazement
*Here, the poem alludes to the Spanish explorer Hernan Cortez,
whose so-called exploration of the Americas ushered in the
destruction of the Aztecs. However, this reference was a
mistake on Keats’s part—Vasco Nunez de Balboa was actually
the first “explorer” to see the Pacific from the “New World.”
After realising the mistake, it was
left in anyways to better fit the meter.
On the Sea
CONTENT
- April 1817
- Petrarchan sonnet (ABBAx2 and CDECED)
- octave: talks abt the mighty sea + its healing capabilities
- sestet: expands on first point + advices ppl to go to the sea to heal
QUOTES
- “gluts twice ten thousand” (3) = hyperbole, suggests its tides can
overflow thousands of sea-caves
- “Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound” (4) = allusion to Greek moon goddess that controls the tides + empties those caves again. not just mighty, but also enchanted.
- “eyeballs vexed and tired” “ears are dinned with uproar rude / Or fed too much with cloying melody” = sensory imagery (9-12)/feeding imagery (10-13), gives advice to readers + find healing from the sea
In drear-nighted December
CONTENT
- December 1817
- lyric poem = 3x stanzas of octaves: talk abt the impermanence + permanence of nature as a symbol for human experience
QUOTES
- “The north cannot undo them/With a sleety whistle through them/ Nor frozen thawings glue them” (5-8) = epistrophe, creates a driven, forceful, defiant sound compared to 1st quatrain. suggests envy
- “Too happy, happy brook…/ne’er remember/Apollo’s summer look” (10-12) = repetition, absolute “never”, allusion suggests brook lives ignorant bliss + Apollo (poetry + medicine), suggests smth is missing in winter
- “feel it” “heal it” “steel it” “Was never said in rime” (17-20) = epistrophe, changeable meaning suggests loss is slippery + ends on helpless note, accepting the hard truth of human experience
On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again
CONTENT
- January 1818
- Petrarchan sonnet in the OCTAVE: romance is a temptress, nice but escapist
- Shakespearian sonnet in the SESTET = wants to escape romance to experience tragedy + be reborn as creative
QUOTES
- “O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!” (1) = apostrophe, lute connotes melody, creates charming image of Romance
- “betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay” (6) = religious imagery, antithesis to romance, plosives, suggests tragedy creates visceral experiences
“Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion…/Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire” (sestet) = apostrophe, wanted to follow in Shakespeare’s footsteps in writing nature of life. metaphor “Phoenix” suggests wants to be reborn a new poet from his ruin.
When I have Fears
CONTENT
- January 1818
- Shakespearian sonnet (ABABCDCDEFEFGG)
- Octave: talks abt how much he still needs to translate in his literature/so much works
- Sestet: so much to experience, e.g. unreflecting love
- rhyming couplet: his existence will fade
QUOTES
- “Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain” (2) = anaphora of temporal marker, gleaned = harvesting, wanted to harvest his ideas to ripeness + pen/paper
- “never live to trace/ Their shadows with the magic hand of chance” (7-8) = euphemism of death, metaphor of writing. ‘shadows’ cannot fully replicate nature.
“till love and fame to nothingness do sink” (14) = metaphor/imagery = death might prevent them from love + recognition or death makes love + fame doesn’t matter when it occurs + iambic pentameter = finds perfection in death may be possible
The Eve of St Agnes
CONTENT
- St Agnes Eve is January 20th
- Early 1819
- narrative poem
- spenserian stanzas (8 lines of iambic pentameter) - always end on a Alexandrine (12 syllables) = creates PAUSE + visual
QUOTES
- “bitter chill” “cold” “frozen grass” “frosted breath” = pathetic fallacy
- “sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose…heart /made purple riot” (136-8) vs “as the rose /blendeth its odour with the violet” (320-21) = parallel? both use metaphors suggests plan was successful + that they transcend into dreams together despite the tragedy out in the real world
- “died palsy-twitch’d…deform” “ashes cold” (final spenserian stanza) = semantic field of decay + cold, return to the first spenserian stanza. order?
To Sleep
CONTENT
- April 1819
- has aspects of sonnet form, experimental?
- octave: reverent of the experience of sleep, soothing/escapism, permanence vs impermanence
- sestet: wants to escape consciousness. sleep gives respite but fears forever sleep/death
QUOTES
- “our gloom-pleas’d eyes, embower’d from the light” (3) = oxymoron/compound adjective = suggests a tension between wanting to escape + not dying forever, imagery = hiding bower, safety
- “Save me from curious Conscious” (11) = rep of “save me”, calling onto a subject. Desires escape + easy sleep
- “seal the hushed Casket of my Soul” (14) = apostrophe, semantic field of death around sestet, wished for permanent sleep but knows that means death = bad
Ode to Psyche
CONTENT
- April/May 1819
- irregular rhyme scheme, no. of lines, metric
- starts off pictorial image of nature + love, turns onto what Psyche does not have, then what she have in his head, ends in his mind + positive note
QUOTES
- “I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d” (43) = sensory imagery. after listing what she lacks, the vision of what she shoud have is solidified = awakening
- “A rosy sanctuary” = bower imagery, suggests safety + nature.
- “To let the warm Love in!” = metaphor, exclamatory sent, personification? suggests celebration of beauty in what is absent, but provided in the mind?
Ode on Grecian Urn
CONTENT
- April/May 1819
- 10-line stanzas, beginning with an ABAB rhyme scheme + ending with a Miltonic sestet (1st and 5th stanzas CDEDCE, 2nd stanza CDECED, and 3rd and 4th stanzas CDECDE).
- themes - permanence, idealism, mortality, perfection, beauty + art
QUOTES
- “Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness” (1) = juxtaposition - they cannot move but it still occurs?
- “All breathing human passion far above, / That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d/ A burning forehead, and a parching tongue” (28-30) = juxtaposes the ppl in the urn, suggests to be human is to be mortal ‘breathing’, semantic field of illness = lovesick + reminds us of mortality
- “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” (49) = epigram, suggests that there is beauty in permanence + truth never perishes, thus, “truth beauty”
Ode to a Nightingale
CONTENT
- April/May 1819. story:
1. I’m in pain. Not jealous just too happy
2. I’d like to escape with you
3. You’ve never known all this stress of sickness
4. I’ll fly to you on the wings of poetry
5. I can’t see the flowers it’s too dark
6. It seems a good time to die
7. You won’t die. You’ve been around forever
8. I can’t do this. Is it real?
QUOTES
- “light-winged Dryad” “melodious plot” “singest of summer in full-throated ease” (7-10) = compound adjective - nightingale is uplifted while speaker descends. dryad = tree nymph or butterfly, image of transformation. Also harmony. “ease” no worries, happy in its permanence.
- “the murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves” = sense of decay/death contrasts with natural imagery within the same stanza - negative capability.
- “do I wake or sleep?” (final line) = rhetorical question. struggling to find a proper response or seeing clarity. juxtaposition.
Ode on Melancholy
CONTENT
- April/May 1819
- introduces the poisonous side of melancholy while hinting at its +ve elements “kiss’d”, urges you to indulge in it bc u need it, melancholy is intertwined w joy
QUOTES
- “Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d” = colour imagery suggests illness from poison, but kiss’d is oxymoronic, creates a gentler image of melancholy
- “sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, / That fosters the droop-headed flowers” = simile, imagery, suggests it is a blessing despite it is weeping, it also “fosters” verb is nourishing/restores flowers to life.
- “his soul shalt taste the sadness of her might, / and be among her cloudy trophies hung” = imagery, sibilance imitating sadness/soothing. suggests that melancholy is a warrior that will claim you. INDULGE.
To Autumn
CONTENT
- Sept 1819
- introduces end of summer/beginning of autumn, then during autumn, lastly end of autumn/beginning of winter
QUOTES
- “until they think warm days will never cease” (10) = sense of warning suggests delusion. Feels like it will last forever, but this cannot be true. stasis vs dynamic
- “half-reap’d furrow…sleep” “Drowsed” (16-17) = compound word, suggesting unfinished job/harvest. “drowsed” “sleep” stasis is illusion
- “Borne aloft/ Or sinking” (28-29) = juxtaposition, enjambment, suggests life + death r the same despite seeming separate. inevitably intertwined. just like changing of seasons.
Bright Star
CONTENT
- Mid 1819
- Shakespearean sonnet (ABABCDCD)
- octave: wants to be permanent like the star, a watcher
- sestet: but wants to be active in human experience thus accepts impermanence of humans
QUOTES
- “lone splendour” “eternal lids” “Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite” = oxymoron suggests that it is great to be permanent but it is lonely - “eternal” reinforces permanence of star. simile suggests that the star forever watches nature of below.
- “pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast, / to feel for ever its soft fall + swell” (10-11) = metaphor, after the perfect ripening comes decay. pillow + sibilance suggest relaxation. imagery - literally breathing. speaker wants permanence of star BUT at the MOMENT OF HUMAN CONNECTION - “for ever”.
- “and so live ever - or else swoon to death” (14) = juxtaposition. keep the moment of perfection, reinforced by iambic pentameter or die in this moment of perfection.
