Keats: Poems Published in 1820
PAGE 118. l. 13. _'Mid . . . eyed._ Nature in its appeal to every sense.
In this line we have the essence of all that makes the beauty of flowers
satisfying and comforting.
l. 14. _Tyrian_, purple, from a certain dye made at Tyre.
l. 20. _aurorean._ Aurora is the goddess of dawn. Cf. _Hyperion_, i.
181.
l. 25. _Olympus._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 9, note.
_hierarchy._ The orders of gods, with Jupiter as head.
l. 26. _Phoebe_, or Diana, goddess of the moon.
l. 27. _Vesper_, the evening star.
PAGE 119. l. 34. _oracle_, a sacred place where the god was supposed to
answer questions of vital import asked him by his worshippers.
l. 37. _fond believing_, foolishly credulous.
l. 41. _lucent fans_, luminous wings.
PAGE 120. l. 55. _fledge . . . steep._ Probably a recollection of what
he had seen in the Lakes, for on June 29, 1818, he writes to Tom from
Keswick of a waterfall which 'oozes out from a cleft in perpendicular
Rocks, all fledged with Ash and other beautiful trees'.
l. 57. _Dryads._ Cf. _Lamia_, l. 5, note.
INTRODUCTION TO FANCY.
This poem, although so much lighter in spirit, bears a certain relation
in thought to Keats's other odes. In the _Nightingale_ the tragedy of
this life made him long to escape, on the wings of imagination, to the
ideal world of beauty symbolized by the song of the bird. Here finding
all real things, even the most beautiful, pall upon him, he extols the
fancy, which can escape from reality and is not tied by place or season
in its search for new joys. This is, of course, only a passing mood, as
the extempore character of the poetry indicates. We see more of settled
conviction in the deeply-meditative _Ode to Autumn_, where he finds the
ideal in the rich and ever-changing real.
This poem is written in the four-accent metre employed by Milton in
_L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_, and we can often detect a similarity of
cadence, and a resemblance in the scenes imagined.
NOTES ON FANCY.
PAGE 123. l. 16. _ingle_, chimney-nook.
PAGE 126. l. 81. _Ceres' daughter_, Proserpina. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63,
note.
l. 82. _God of torment._ Pluto, who presides over the torments of the
souls in Hades.
PAGE 127. l. 85. _Hebe_, the cup-bearer of Jove.
l. 89. _And Jove grew languid._ Observe the fitting slowness of the
first half of the line, and the sudden leap forward of the second.
NOTES ON ODE
['BARDS OF PASSION AND OF MIRTH'].
PAGE 128. l. 1. _Bards_, poets and singers.
l. 8. _parle_, French _parler_. Cf. _Hamlet_, I. i. 62.
l. 12. _Dian's fawns._ Diana was the goddess of hunting.
INTRODUCTION TO LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.
The Mermaid Tavern was an old inn in Bread Street, Cheapside. Tradition
says that the literary club there was established by Sir Walter Raleigh
in 1603. In any case it was, in Shakespeare's time, frequented by the
chief writers of the day, amongst them Ben Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher,
Selden, Carew, Donne, and Shakespeare himself. Beaumont, in a poetical
epistle to Ben Jonson, writes:
What things have we seen
Done at the Mermaid! heard words that have been
So nimble and so full of subtle flame,
As if that any one from whence they came
Had meant to put his whole wit in a jest,
And has resolved to live a fool the rest
Of his dull life.
NOTES ON LINES ON THE MERMAID TAVERN.
PAGE 131. l. 10. _bold Robin Hood._ Cf. _Robin Hood_, p. 133.
l. 12. _bowse_, drink.
PAGE 132. ll. 16-17. _an astrologer's . . . story._ The astrologer would
record, on parchment, what he had seen in the heavens.
l. 22. _The Mermaid . . . Zodiac._ The zodiac was an imaginary belt
across the heavens within which the sun and planets were supposed to
move. It was divided into twelve parts corresponding to the twelve
months of the year, according to the position of the moon when full.
Each of these parts had a sign by which it was known, and the sign of
the tenth was a fish-tailed goat, to which Keats refers as the Mermaid.
The word _zodiac_ comes from the Greek +zodion+, meaning
a little animal, since originally all the signs were animals.
INTRODUCTION TO ROBIN HOOD.
Early in 1818 John Hamilton Reynolds, a friend of Keats, sent him two
sonnets which he had written 'On Robin Hood'. Keats, in his letter of
thanks, after giving an appreciation of Reynolds's production, says: 'In
return for your Dish of Filberts, I have gathered a few Catkins, I hope
they'll look pretty.' Then follow these lines, entitled, 'To J. H. R. in
answer to his Robin Hood sonnets.' At the end he writes: 'I hope you
will like them--they are at least written in the spirit of outlawry.'
Robin Hood, the outlaw, was a popular hero of the Middle Ages. He was a
great poacher of deer, brave, chivalrous, generous, full of fun, and
absolutely without respect for law and order. He robbed the rich to give
to the poor, and waged ceaseless war against the wealthy prelates of the
church. Indeed, of his endless practical jokes, the majority were played
upon sheriffs and bishops. He lived, with his 'merry men', in Sherwood
Forest, where a hollow tree, said to be his 'larder', is still shown.
Innumerable ballads telling of his exploits were composed, the first
reference to which is in the second edition of Langland's _Piers
Plowman_, c. 1377. Many of these ballads still survive, but in all these
traditions it is quite impossible to disentangle fact from fiction.
NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD.
PAGE 133. l. 4. _pall._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 268.
l. 9. _fleeces_, the leaves of the forest, cut from them by the wind as
the wool is shorn from the sheep's back.
PAGE 134. l. 13. _ivory shrill_, the shrill sound of the ivory horn.
ll. 15-18. Keats imagines some man who has not heard the laugh hearing
with bewilderment its echo in the depths of the forest.
l. 21. _seven stars_, Charles's Wain or the Big Bear.
l. 22. _polar ray_, the light of the Pole, or North, star.
l. 30. _pasture Trent_, the fields about the Trent, the river of
Nottingham, which runs by Sherwood forest.
PAGE 135. l. 33. _morris._ A dance in costume which, in the Tudor
period, formed a part of every village festivity. It was generally
danced by five men and a boy in girl's dress, who represented Maid
Marian. Later it came to be associated with the May games, and other
characters of the Robin Hood epic were introduced. It was abolished,
with other village gaieties, by the Puritans, and though at the
Restoration it was revived it never regained its former importance.
l. 34. _Gamelyn._ The hero of a tale (_The Tale of Gamelyn_) attributed
to Chaucer, and given in some MSS. as _The Cook's Tale_ in _The
Canterbury Tales_. The story of Orlando's ill-usage, prowess, and
banishment, in _As You Like It_, Shakespeare derived from this source,
and Keats is thinking of the merry life of the hero amongst the outlaws.
l. 36. '_grene shawe_,' green wood.
PAGE 136. l. 53. _Lincoln green._ In the Middle Ages Lincoln was very
famous for dyeing green cloth, and this green cloth was the
characteristic garb of the forester and outlaw.
l. 62. _burden._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 503.
NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN'.
In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819,
Keats says: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A
temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste
weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye
better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field
looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me
so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' What he composed
was the Ode _To Autumn_.
PAGE 137. ll. 1 seq. The extraordinary concentration and richness of
this description reminds us of Keats's advice to Shelley--'Load every
rift of your subject with ore.' The whole poem seems to be painted in
tints of red, brown, and gold.
PAGE 138. ll. 12 seq. From the picture of an autumn day we proceed to
the characteristic sights and occupations of autumn, personified in the
spirit of the season.
l. 18. _swath_, the width of the sweep of the scythe.
ll. 23 seq. Now the sounds of autumn are added to complete the
impression.
ll. 25-6. Compare letter quoted above.
PAGE 139. l. 28. _sallows_, trees or low shrubs of the willowy kind.
ll. 28-9. _borne . . . dies._ Notice how the cadence of the line fits
the sense. It seems to rise and fall and rise and fall again.
NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY.
PAGE 140. l. 1. _Lethe._ See _Lamia_, i. 81, note.
l. 2. _Wolf's-bane_, aconite or hellebore--a poisonous plant.
l. 4. _nightshade_, a deadly poison.
_ruby . . . Proserpine._ Cf. Swinburne's _Garden of Proserpine_.
_Proserpine._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63, note.
l. 5. _yew-berries._ The yew, a dark funereal-looking tree, is
constantly planted in churchyards.
l. 7. _your mournful Psyche._ See Introduction to the _Ode to Psyche_,
p. 236.
PAGE 141. l. 12. _weeping cloud._ l. 14. _shroud._ Giving a touch of
mystery and sadness to the otherwise light and tender picture.
l. 16. _on . . . sand-wave_, the iridescence sometimes seen on the
ribbed sand left by the tide.
l. 21. _She_, i.e. Melancholy--now personified as a goddess. Compare
this conception of melancholy with the passage in _Lamia_, i. 190-200.
Cf. also Milton's personifications of Melancholy in _L'Allegro_ and _Il
Penseroso_.
PAGE 142. l. 30. _cloudy_, mysteriously concealed, seen of few.
INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION.
This poem deals with the overthrow of the primaeval order of Gods by
Jupiter, son of Saturn the old king. There are many versions of the
fable in Greek mythology, and there are many sources from which it may
have come to Keats. At school he is said to have known the classical
dictionary by heart, but his inspiration is more likely to have been due
to his later reading of the Elizabethan poets, and their translations of
classic story. One thing is certain, that he did not confine himself to
any one authority, nor did he consider it necessary to be circumscribed
by authorities at all. He used, rather than followed, the Greek fable,
dealing freely with it and giving it his own interpretation.
The situation when the poem opens is as follows:--Saturn, king of the
gods, has been driven from Olympus down into a deep dell, by his son
Jupiter, who has seized and used his father's weapon, the thunderbolt. A
similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by
Keats Titans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the
two races are quite distinct. These Titans are the children of Tellus
and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first
birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the
separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all
things, had reigned supreme. One only of the Titans, Hyperion the
sun-god, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by
young Apollo, the god of light and song.
In the second book we hear Oceanus and Clymene his daughter tell how
both were defeated not by battle or violence, but by the irresistible
beauty of their dispossessors; and from this Oceanus deduces 'the
eternal law, that first in beauty should be first in might'. He recalls
the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his
kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that
progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and
better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a
cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren to resist.
In Book I we saw Hyperion, though still a god, distressed by portents,
and now in Book III we see the rise to divinity of his successor, the