John Keats: Day 2

"What shocks the virtuous philosp[h]er, delights the camelion Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation"
letter to Richard Woodhouse (Oct 27, 1818)

Points of Reflection

1. is Porphyro a heroic figure? Is Madeline a damsel in distress? Is their departure a romantic rescue?

2. is the concluding tone of "When I Have Fears . . ." uplifting, depressing, or something else?

3. what do you imagine Wordsworth and Coleridge would have each thought of Keats' epistolary reflections on the nature of the poet and the purpose of poetry?

4. compare the attitude towards the temporary/ephemeral in Keats's "Ode to Melancholy" (1819; 1820) with that in the poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley below:

"Mutability"

We are as clouds that veil the midnight moon;
How restlessly they speed, and gleam, and quiver,
Streaking the darkness radiantly!--yet soon
Night closes round, and they are lost for ever:

Or like forgotten lyres, whose dissonant strings
Give various response to each varying blast,
To whose frail frame no second motion brings
One mood or modulation like the last.

We rest.--A dream has power to poison sleep;
We rise.--One wandering thought pollutes the day;
We feel, conceive or reason, laugh or weep;
Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away:

It is the same!--For, be it joy or sorrow,
The path of its departure still is free:
Man's yesterday may ne'er be like his morrow;
Nought may endure but Mutability.

Percy Bysshe Shelley
(ca.1814-15; 1816)

"The Eve of St. Agnes" (1848)
Edward Burnes Jones

Paul Marchbanks
marchban@email.unc.edu