Ode to Keats

In preparation for the test, I braved the big bad world outside my home into this crazy space known as a library. I know, I'm as shocked as you are! For the majority of the year none of my courses required any outside research from the course texts or the internet, so I completely forgot what a wealth of information a library holds. So I took out a number of books, only to find out that I no longer had a test to study for. To that end I decided to put the books and their knowledge to use and write about John Keats first.

Originally he was studying to be a doctor but then realized that he had as he put it "abilities greater than most men" and therefore abandoned his profession to write poetry. He was a Romantic poet who worked at his desire to write well. He studied classical legends, which can be seen in his mythological references within his poems. Also much of his work embodies influences of other poets, authors, and artists.

Keats' Odes are collectively an exploration of:

a. the middle state that is neither heaven or earth
b. the difficulty in the co-existence of beauty and pain

The Odes also contain various material which can be associated with a number of different areas of Keats' life. The Odes are about the problems of life and how they weigh upon the human state. The format of these poems blends together the sonnet two forms, Shakespearian and Petrarchan, in an interesting fashion. Keats was dissatisfied with some of the components of form in the traditional sonnets, so he took what he felt to be the best features and applied it to his own poetry. This idea can be seen in the rhyme scheme, which begins with the traditional ABAB in the first four lines. The rhyme scheme then moves towards being something to the affect of CDECDE, but this is a more flexible pattern that Keats changes as we will see.

The Ode that I have chosen to take a closer look at is Ode to Melancholy.

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist (A)
Wolfsbane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; (B)
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed (A)
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; (B)
Make not your rosary of yew-berries, (C)
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be (D)
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl (E)
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; (C)
For shade to shade will come too drowsily (D)
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. (E)

But when the melancholdy fit shall fall (A)
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, (B)
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, (A)
And hides the green hill in an April shroud; (B)
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, (C)
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, (D)
Or on the wealth of globed peonies; (E)
Or if they mistress some rich anger shows, (C)
Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave, (D)
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. (E)

She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die; (A)
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips (B)
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, (A)
Turning to Poison while the bee-mouth sips; (B)
Aye, in the very temple of Delight (C)
Veiled Melancholy has ber sov'reign shrine, (D)
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue (E)
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine; (D)
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, (C)
And be among her cloudy trophies hung. (E)

As denoted at the end of each we can see that Keats does in fact stick with the rhyme scheme that I described above. With the exception of in stanza 3, where the rhyme pattern deviates to this: ABABCDEDCE. In my quest for research and in my own independent thought, I could not come up with an outstandingly intelligent reason for this deviation other than he could not make the C rhyme on the appropriate line. I don't suppose that anyone has any other ideas?

The first stanza deals with a number of elements that induce forgetfulness: Lethe, wolfsbane, nightshade and drowsily. The Lethe is a river in Hades that when drank by the dead makes them forget their human memories; thus leaving them to roam the underworld with nothing to reminisce about. Wolfsbane and nightshade are poisonous plants that were used to make sedatives, while drowsily would refer to the sensation experienced by someone who has taken a sedative. To want to forget about pain and sorrow is a natural human reaction; we tend to prefer to push aside our emotions because they are too hard to work through. There is also the first mention of poison, which is a reoccurring motif in the poem, with the mention of poisonous wine (ie. the wolfsbane and nightshade).

In the second stanza we are exposed to the notion that death is truly inescapable, and will come upon us all at some point. Further, when death does come knocking on our door it will be swift and "sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud". Yet inspite of death, we see the opportunity for rebirth through the mention of: green hill, morning rose, rainbow and wealth of globed peonies. These elements of nature are often found in the spring time, which coincide nicely with the mention of an April shroud. I took the mention of an April shroud to mean two different things. One it could mean the darkness that usually comes with April in terms of the gloom and rain which then causes nature to blossom but only after all of the gloom. Or I also thought that it could mean the shroud of Christ who was killed during the spring season and then came back to life. That one may be a bit of a stretch and probably induced by the fact that yesterday was Easter =)

The last stanza we see the juxtaposition of melancholy against beauty, joy, pleasure and delight which is done to embedded the idea that sadness and happiness go together. That both need to be present in the world in order to balance the emotions of humanity; that there must be sadness in order to achieve happiness and vice versa. There is also the return to the motif of poison that is being covered up with honey and being sipped by humanity. We are slowly being killed off, but are too busy to notice since we are enjoying the greatness that is life. Nor is it entirely clear who it is that is poisoning humanity since melancholy is veiled, thus hiding her true face but she sits in the temple of desire which would not be her normal perch.

In The Visionary Company, it was mentioned by the author Harold Bloom that Keats had excluded the following stanza, which would have acted as the first stanza of the poem:

Though you should build a bark of dead men's bones, (A)
And rear a phantom gibbet for a mast, (B)
Stitch shrouds together for a sail, with groans (A)
To fill it out, blood-stained and aghast; (B)
Although your rudder be a dragon's tail (C)
Long sever'd, yet still hard with agony, (D)
Your cordage large uprootings from the skull (E)
Of bald Medusa, certes you would fail (C)
To find Melancholy - whether she (D)
Dreameth in any isle of Lethe dull. (E)

Upon reading that excluded stanza it isn't hard to see why Keats would leave it out. The graphic imagery constructing a boat out of the parts of a dead person, is rather chilling and doesn't fit with the rest of the poem. Bloom argues that this eliminated stanza carries with it a high resonance of irony in its lines which is then absent from the remainder of the poem.

I'm not sure if I see this irony, but I am willing to say that I prefer the published version of the Ode to Melancholy minus this graphic stanza.

sv

Sources Used:

1. Harold Bloom, The Visionary Company, New York: Cornell University Press, 1971.

2. J.R. Watson, The English Poetry of the Romantic Period, 2nd Edition, New York: Addison Wesley Longman Limited, 1992.

3. www.mythweb.com/fin/index.html