Tag Archives: John Keats

“On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” by John Keats [w/ Audio]

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My spirit is too weak -- mortality
   Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep,
   And each imagined pinnacle and steep
 Of godlike hardship tells me I must die
 Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.
   Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep
   That I have not the cloudy winds to keep
 Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye.
 Such dim-conceived glories of the brain
   Bring round the heart an undescribable feud;
 So do these wonders a most dizzy pain,
   That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude
 Wasting of old time--with a billowy main --
   A sun--a shadow of a magnitude.

“The Human Seasons” by John Keats [w/ Audio]

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Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;
   There are four seasons in the mind of man:
 He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
   Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
 He has his Summer, when luxuriously 
   Spring's honied cud of youthful thought
     he loves
 To ruminate, and by such dreaming high
   Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
 His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
   He furleth close; contented so to look
 On mists in idleness -- to let fair things
   Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
 He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
 Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

“Bright Star” by John Keats [w/ Audio]

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Source: NASA
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art --
 Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
 And watching, with eternal lids apart,
 Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
 The moving waters at their priestlike task
 Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
 Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
 Of snow upon the mountains and the moors --
 No -- yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
 Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
 To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
 Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
 Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
 And so live ever -- or else swoon to death.

BOOK REVIEW: Selected Poems by John Keats

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Selected Poems (Macmillan Collector's Library Book 189)Selected Poems by John Keats
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Amazon.in Page

This collection of sixty-one poems from the early 19th century British Romantic poet contains a diverse cross-section of poems. While 61 poems might not seem like a substantial selection by today’s standards, this volume includes several long form poems such a “Lamia,” “Hyperion,” and a long excerpt from “Endymion.” It includes all of Keats’ most popular and anthologized works, including: “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” “To Sleep,” “Bright Star…,” “To Autumn,” and “Ode to a Nightingale.” Among the works included are short, medium, and long poems; rhymed verse and blank verse; sonnets and ballads; love poems, nature poems, Greek Mythological fan fiction [in verse,] and homages to important influences — e.g. Shakespeare.

Keats died at 25, making it all the more impressive that he had a body of work from which such a fine selection could be pulled. His imagery is vivid, and his lyricism is musical. I’d highly recommend this collection as an excellent overview of Keats’ poetry.


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