1:38am: Ode on a Grecian Urn
miniature portrait of Keats by Joseph Severn, 1819
ODE ON A GRECIAN URN
1 Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
2 Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
3 Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
4 A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
5 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
6 Of deities or mortals, or of both,
7 In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
8 What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
9 What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
10 What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
11 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
12 Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
13 Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
14 Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
15 Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
16 Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
17 Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
18 Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
19 She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
20 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
21 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
22 Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
23 And, happy melodist, unwearied,
24 For ever piping songs for ever new;
25 More happy love! more happy, happy love!
26 For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
27 For ever panting, and for ever young;
28 All breathing human passion far above,
29 That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
30 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
31 Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
32 To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
33 Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
34 And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
35 What little town by river or sea shore,
36 Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
37 Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
38 And, little town, thy streets for evermore
39 Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
40 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
41 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
42 Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
43 With forest branches and the trodden weed;
44 Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
45 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
46 When old age shall this generation waste,
47 Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
48 Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
49 "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
50 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
"John Keats was born in Finsbury Pavement near London on October 31st, 1795. The first son of a stable-keeper, he had a sister and three brothers, one of whom died in infancy. When John was eight years old, his father was killed in an accident. In the same year his mother married again, but little later separated from her husband and took her family to live with her mother. John attended a good school where he became well acquainted with ancient and contemporary literature. In 1810 his mother died of consumption, leaving the children to their grandmother. The old lady put them under the care of two guardians, to whom she made over a respectable amount of money for the benifit of the orphans. Under the authority of the guardians, he was taken from school to an be apprentice to a surgeon. In 1814, before completion of his apprenticeship, John left his master after a quarrel, becoming a hospital student in London. Under the guidance of his friend Cowden Clarke he devoted himself increasingly to literature. In 1814 Keats finally sacrificed his medical ambitions to a literary life.
He soon got acquainted with celebrated artists of his time, like Leigh Hunt, Percy B. Shelley and Benjamin Robert Haydon. In May 1816, Hunt helped him publish his first poem in a magazine. A year later Keats published about thirty poems and sonnets printed in the volume "Poems".
"After receiving scarce, negative feedback, Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight on his own in spring of 1817. In the late summer he went to Oxford together with a newly-made friend, Benjamin Bailey. In the following winter, George Keats married and emigrated to America, leaving the consumptuous brother Tom to the John's care. Apart from helping Tom against consumption, Keats worked on his poem "Endymion". Just before its publication, he went on a hiking tour to Scotland and Ireland with his friend Charles Brown. First signs of his own fatal disease forced him to return prematurely, where he found his brother seriously ill and his poem harshly critisized. In December 1818 Tom Keats died. John moved to Hampstead Heath, were he lived in the house of Charles Brown. While in Scotland with Keats, Brown had lent his house to a Mrs Brawne and her sixteen-year-old daughter Fanny. Since the ladies where still living in London, Keats soon made their acquaintance and fell in love with the beautiful, fashionable girl. Absorbed in love and poetry, he exhausted himself mentally, and in autumn of 1819, he tried to gain some distance to literature through an ordinary occupation.
"An unmistakeable sign of consumption in February 1820 however broke all his plans for the future, marking the beginning of what he called his "postmumous life". He could not enjoy the positive resonance on the publication of the volume "Lamia, Isabella &c.", including his most celebrated odes. In the late summer of 1820, Keats was ordered by his doctors to avoid the English winter and move to Italy. His friend Joseph Severn accompanied him south - first to Naples, and then to Rome. His health improved momentarily, only to collapse finally. Keats died in Rome on the 23rd of February, 1821. He was buried on the Protestant Cemetary, near the grave of Caius Cestius. On his desire, the following lines were engraved on his tombstone: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." (From www.John-Keats.com)
Posted by cronish at October 31, 2002 01:50 AM