Critique on Keats poems.

Name: Vadher Ankita.

Paper: E-C-201: The Romantic Literature.

Topic: Critique on Keats poems.

SEM: 2, Part: 1.

Year: 2011/12.

Submitted To,

 Dr. Dilip Barad,

Dept.of English,

Bhavnagar University.

™ Ode to a Nightingale ˜

v Summary:

The speaker feels numb as though he had taken a drug only a moment ago. He is addressing a nightingale he hears singing somewhere in the forest and says that his “drowsy numbness” is not from envy of the nightingale’s happiness, but rather from sharing it, He is “Too Happy” that the nightingale sings the music of summer from amid some unseen green trees and shadows.

          In  the 2^nd stanza the speaker longs for the oblivion of alcohol, expressing his wish for wine that would taste like the country and like peasant dances, and let him a disappear into the dim forest with the nightingale.

          In the 3^rd stanza, he explains his desire to fade away and saying he would to forget the troubles the nightingale has never known of human life with its consciousness that everything is mortal and nothing lasts.

          In the 4^th stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale to fly away, and he will follow not through alcohol, but through poetry, which will give him “Wireless Wings”. He says he is already with the nightingale and describes the forest glad he says where the moonlight is hidden by the trees.

          In the 5^th stanza, the speaker can’t see the flower in the glade but can guess them white Hawthorne violet and the musk rose.

          In the 6^th stanza, the speaker listens in the dark to the nightingale, saying that he has often been “Half in Love” with the idea of dying and called death soft names in many rhymes. The speaker thinks that the idea of death seems richer than ever.

          In the 7^th stanza, the speaker tells the nightingale that it is immortal that it was not “born for death”. He says that the voice he hears singing has always been heard by ancient emperors and clowns.

          In the 8^th stanza, the nightingale flies farther away from him he laments that his imagination has failed him he says the music is gone the speaker can’t recalled whether he himself is awake or asleep.

v Form:

          Ode to a nightingale is written in 10 line stanzas. The 1^st seven and last two lines of each stanza are written in iambic pentameter. The eight line of each stanza is written in trimester with only three accented syllables instead of five each stanza in “nightingale” is rhymed ABABCDECDE.

v Themes:

          Here in the poem the speaker hearing the song of the nightingale the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. His first true thought is to reach the bird state through alcohol in the 2^nd stanza he longs for a “draught of vintage” to transport him out of himself. But in the third stanza on the transience of life he rejects the idea of being “charioted by Bacchus and his parts”.

          The rapture of poetic inspiration matches the endless creative rapture of the nightingales music and the speaker in five through seven stanzas he imagine himself with the bird in the darkened forest. The ecstatic music even encourages the speaker to embrace the idea of dying. The “art” of the nightingale is endlessly changeable and renewably. It is music without record existing only in the perpetual present. The nightingale’s song is spontaneous and without physical manifestation.

™ To Autumn ˜

v Summary:

The poem opens with addressing autumn describing its abundance and its intimacy with the sun in the 2^nd stanza the speaker describe the figure of the autumn as a female goddess often seen setting on the granary floor her hair “ soft lifted” by the wind and often seen sleeping in the fields or the juice from apple.

          In the 3^rd stanza the speaker tells autumn not to wonder where the song of spring has gone but instead to listen to her own music.

v Form:

“To Autumn” is written in a tree stanza structure with a variable rhyme scheme. Each stanza is eleven lines longs the first part of each stanza follows ABAB rhyme scheme the first line rhyming with the third and second line rhyming with the forth. The second part of each stanza is longer and varies in the rhyme scheme. The first stanza is arranged CDEDCCE and the second and third stanza are arranging CDECDDE.

v Theme:

           “To Autumn” is one of the simplest of keat’s odes. There is nothing confusing or complex in keat’s paean to the season of the autumn, with its fruitfulness, it flowers the song of its. Swallows gathering for migration. “To Autumn” takes up where the other odes leave off. The selection of the season implicitly takes up the other odes theme of temporarily, mortality and change. Autumn in keat’s odes is a time of warmth and plenty but it is perched on the brink of witness desolation as the bees enjoy “later flowers” the harvest is gather from the fields the lambs of spring are now “ full grown” and in the final line of the poem the swallows gather for their winter migration. Despite the coming chill of winter the late warmth of autumn provides keat’s speaker with ample beauty the celebrate the cottage and its surroundings I the first stanza the agrarian hunts of the goddess in the second and the locates of natural creature in the third. In this poem the act of creation is pictured as a kind of harvesting. The pen harvest the field of the brain and books are filled with the resulting “grain”. The sense of coming loss that permeates the poem confronts the sorrow underlying the season’s creativity. What makes “To Autumn” beautiful is that it brings and engagement with that connection out of the become mythology and fantasy and in to the everyday world.

™ Ode to Psyche ˜

v Summary:

          The speaker opens the poem with an address to the goddess psyche, the poet says that why he is wondering through the forest that vary day he stumbled upon “too fair creatures”, lying side by side by side in the grass beneath a “ whispering roof” of leaves surrounded by flowers. They embraced one another with both there arms and wings the speaker says he knew the winged boy.

          In the 2^nd stanza the speaker describing psyche again as the youngest and most beautiful of all the Olympian gods and goddess psyche has none of the trapping of worship. She has no temple, no alters, no choir to sing for her.

          In the 3^rd stanza the speaker attribute this lack to psyche’s youth. But the speaker says that even in the fallen days of his own time he would like to pay homage to psyche and become her choir her music and her oracle.

          In the 4^th stanza he continue saying he will become psyche priest and build her a temple in an “untrodden region” of his own mind. A region surround by thought that resemble the beauty of nature.  

v From:

          The stanzas vary in numbers of lines rhyme scheme and metrical scheme and convey the effect of spontaneous. Lines are iambic but vary from diameter to pentameter. The number of lines in a stanza is simply organic and irregular stanza one has 23 lines stanza two has 12, stanza three has 14 and stanza for has 18. The full rhyme scheme is ABABCDCD EFGEEGH IIJJ KIKI. It can essentially be broken in to the five parts two pair’s four lines. The large number of irregularities and long rhyme scheme is this old should not be taken as signs of great formal complexity. “Ode to psyche” is much more freely and loosely written than any of keat’s other odes.

v Theme:

          The basis for the story of “ode to psyche” is the famous myth. Psyche was the youngest and most beautiful daughter of a king. She was so beautiful and the goddess of love and beauty was jealous of her. She dispatched her son Eros the god of love to punish psyche for being so started by psyche’s beauty and fell in love with her Eros remained invisible to her coming to her only at night and oracle psyche lit a lamp in order to catch glimpse of her lover but Eros was so angry with her for breaking his trust that he left her. Psyche was forced to performed number of difficult task to Venus and win back Eros as her husband. As keat’s observed myth of psyche was never worshiped as real goddess. That silent is what compels keat’s speaker to dedicate himself to becoming her temple her priest and her profit all in one. “Ode to psyche” is simply a song to love and the creative imagination.