Lecture 4 of Book Two
John Keats
I. Life:
• John Keats was born in 1795 in London.
• Before John was fifteen, both his parents died and his
guardian, a merchant, took him from school and bound
him as an apprentice to a surgeon. For five years he
served his apprenticeship and for two years more he
was surgeon's helper in the hospitals.
• But he early contracted a love of poetry under the
influence of his young teacher Charles Cowden Clarke
(1787-1877), who gave him a copy of ' The Fairy Queen'.
• He made friends with Leigh Hunt, Hazlitt and Shelley in
London and published some poems in Hunt's magazine
"Examiner".
• His second book " Endymion appeared in 1818.
Then he gave up medicine for poetry.
• In the summer of 1818 Keats left London and
started on a walking tour through England and
Scotland. During his travels he became
acquainted with the life of small towns and
villages and witnessed the poverty and
privations of the people.
• In Scotland he visited the home and the grave of
Burns. He left some letters and poems written
during the tour, which show his interest in the
political life of his country and his concern for the
miserable condition of the common people.
• Points of view
• (1) Keats was a moderate radical in comparison with Byron and
Shelley. Naturally he was against political oppression (more
consciously so when he was under the influence of Leigh Hunt). He
was horrified by the savage poverty and the human degradation he
saw among the Scottish and Irish peasants. As a poet he was too
possessed by the tragic view of man; as a man his life was riven
with too many tragedies.
• (2) Keats believed that poetry is a release from misery, a vehicle to
paradise. The lofty mission of his poetry is to work for the welfare of
the people. The dominant thoughts and feelings in his poetry can be
summarized like this: the world of nature is beautiful; the realms of
art, poetry and imagination fire wonderful; but the existing human
society contains inescapable and irremediable misery. At the heart
of his major poems lies Keats's concern with how the ideal can be
joined with the real, and the imagined with the actual. And the
message carried in his poetry is the lasting power of beamy and its
union with truth.
• Major works
• (1) Endymion (1818)
• This is a poem based on the Greek myth of Endymion and the moon
goddess. In this poem, Keats described his imagination in an
enchanted atmosphere--a lovely moon-lit world where human love
and ideal beauty were merged into one. It marked a transitional
phase in Keats's poetry.
• (2) Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820).
This is the third and best of Keats's volumes of poetry. The three title
poems all deal with mythical and legendary themes of ancient,
medieval, and Renaissance times. At the heart of these poems lies
Keats's concern with how the ideal can be joined with the real, the
imagined with the actual, and man with woman. The volume also
contains his four great odes: "Ode on Melancholy", "Ode on a
Grecian Urn", "Ode to a Nightingale", "Ode to Psyche"; his lyric
masterpiece "To Autumn" and the unfinished poem "Hyperion".
• (3) Odes
• The odes are generally regarded as Keats's most important and
mature works. Their subject matter is the poet's abiding
preoccupation with the imagination as it reaches out to union with
the beautiful. In the greatest of these works, he also suggests the
undercurrent of disillusion that accompanies such ecstasy, the
human suffering which forever questions the visionary
transcendence achieved by art.
• (4) Sonnets
• Keats wrote 64 sonnets altogether. His earlier sonnets are mainly in
the Italian form, though he often introduces variations of the strict
rhyme scheme. He also wrote a few sonnets of the Shakespearean
type. The most important sonnets by Keats would be: "On First
Looking Into Chapman's Homer", "On Sitting Down to Read King
Lear Once Again", "On the Grasshopper and Cricket", and "When I
have Fears That I May Cease to Be“.
• 3. Special features
• (1) Keats's poetry is always sensuous, colorful
and rich in imagery, which expresses the
acuteness of his senses. Sight, sound, scent,
taste and feeling are all taken in to give an entire
understanding of an experience.
• (2) Keats has the power of entering the feelings
of others—either human or animal. He declared
once that when he saw a bird on the lawn, he
entered imaginatively into the life of the bird.
• (3) Keats delights to dwell on beautiful words
and phrases, which sound musical. He draws
diction, style and imagery from works of
Shakespeare, Milton and Dante. With vivid and
rich images, he paints poetic pictures full of
wonderful color.
• Endymion: A Poetical Romance" (1818) is a
poem of 4,000 lines, ' inscribed to the memory
of' Thomas Chatterton', the young forerunner of
the Romantic Movement. The story is taken from
Greek mythology but much developed by the
poet's own invention. Endymion is a beautiful
shepherd of Mt, Latmos, with whom the moon
goddess Cynthia falls in love. After luring him
through "coudy phantasmsys, she bears him
away to eternal life with her. With this story are
mingled other legends, e.g, that of Venus and
Adonis. So the effect of the poem is not unlike a
sort of fairy voyage after beamy, with the
gathering of wayside flowers.
• The story of ' Isabella, or the Pot of Basil' is
based on Boccaccio's "Decameron". Isabella, a
young girl of a rich family in Florence, is in love
with a poor servant Lorenzo. Her two brothers,
having discovered the love affair, trick Lorenzo
away, murder him treacherously and bury his
body in a forest. Isabella beside herself with grief,
finds the body of her beloved, buries the head in
a flower-pot, sets a plant of basil over it and
brings it home. Her wicked brothers, observing
how she cherishes the basil, steal the pot and
discover the head. Isabella, deprived of her last
consolation, dies heart-broken.
• ."The Eve of St. Agnes'(1819) is a narrative poem written
in Spenserian stanzas. St. Agnes is the patron saint of
virgins. The young maiden Madeline and her lover
Porphyro are from two hostile families. She has been
told the legend that a virtuous maiden may dream of her
future husband on the evening before St. Agnes' Day
(January 21). After the proper ritual, she first dreams of
“hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords", i.e. the feuding
kinsmen of the two families: But Porphyro steals into her
chamber on this night. When Madeline wakes from her
dreams, she finds him by her bedside. Then they escape
together from the castle.
• "Lamia' (1819): takes its story from Barton's
"Anatomy of Melancholy" . Lamia, a serpentmaiden, loves young Lycius, and he, attracted
by her beauty, marries her. Not content with his
happiness, he makes a bridal feast. Among the
guests comes the sophist Apollonius who sees
through Lamia’s disguise. Lamia weeps and
asks Apollonius to be silent. But he will not be
moved and calls her by her name. Thereupon
she, house and all vanish in an instant. This
sounds very much like our "Tale of the White
Serpent" with the difference that the theme of
the old Chinese drama is a praise of faithful love
while the emphasis in Keats's poem is laid on
the appreciation of sensuous beauty.
• "Hyperion" has been regarded as Keats’s greatest achievement in
poetry. It includes two fragments, "Hyperion" and "The Fall of
Hyperion", which Keats wrote in 1818-1819, modeling on Milton’s
"Paradise Lost" and on Dante's "Purgatorio' in "The Divine
Comedy" separately. Its theme is the conflict between the old and
the new, and the story is derived from Greek mythology. The poem
describes the struggle for power in heaven, the displacement of the
old Titans headed by Saturn by the new generation of gods, the
Olympians headed by Zeus. The Titans are even-tempered and
gracious as gods, but all of them, except the sun-god Hyperion,
have been dethroned from heaven. Saturn raises the question
whether there is blank unreason and injustice at the heart of the
universe. Oceanus, the sea-god, gives the answer, the gods, though
themselves blameless, have fallen in the natural course of things,
according to which each stage of development is fated to give place
to a higher excellence.
• The poem carries the theme further in a contrast
between Hyperion, the sun-god of the old order,
and Apollo, the sun-god of the new. Apollo, a
youth living on earth in "aching ignorance", is
destined to displace Hyperion. Apollo is aware of
his ignorance but avid for knowledge. To him
appears Mnemosyne, a female Titan who has
deserted her fellow-gods.
• Suddenly Apollo reads in her face the silent
record of the defeat of the Titans and at once
soars to the knowledge that he seeks: the deep
understanding that life involves process, and
process entails change and suffering, and that
there can be no creative progress except by the
defeat and destruction of the preceding stage.
• The one artistic aim in his poetry was always to
create a beautiful world of imagination as
opposed to the sordid reality of his day. His
exquisite sensibility as a poet enabled him to
perceive readily the beauty of the world at large
and his brilliant fancy turned the impressions
thus obtained into images of beauty, which he
described through verbal music and wordpainting. His leading principle is: "Beauty in truth,
truth in beauty.' ' I am certain of nothing' he
wrote, "but the holiness of the heart's affections,
and the Truth of Imagination. What the
Imagination seizes as beauty must be Truth,
whether it existed before or not.
• ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER
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Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
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And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
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Round many western islands have I been
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Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
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Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
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That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
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Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
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Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
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Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
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When a new planet swims into his ken;
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Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
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He star'd at the Pacific- and all his men
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Look'd at each other with a wild surmise•
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER
• Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
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And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
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Round many western islands have I been
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Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
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Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
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That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
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Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
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Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
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Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
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When a new planet swims into his ken;
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Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
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He star'd at the Pacific- and all his men
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Look'd at each other with a wild surmise•
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
• 初读贾浦曼译荷马有感
我游历了很多金色的国度，
看过不少好的城邦和王国，
还有多少西方的海岛，歌者
都已使它们向阿波罗臣服。
我常听到有一境域，广阔无垠，
智慧的荷马在那里称王，
我从未领略的纯净、安详，
直到我听见贾浦曼的声音
无畏而高昂。于是，我的情感
有如观象家发现了新的星座，
或者像科尔特斯，以鹰隼的眼
凝视着大平洋，而他的同伙
在惊讶的揣测中彼此观看，
尽站在达利安高峰上沉默。
• General Comments
• Keats was so moved by the power and aliveness of
Chapman's translation of Homer that he wrote this
sonnet--after spending all night reading Homer with a
friend. The poem expresses the intensity of Keats's
experience; it also reveals how passionately he cared
about poetry. To communicate how profoundly the
revelation of Homer's genius affected him, Keats uses
imagery of exploration and discovery. In a sense, the
reading experience itself becomes a Homeric voyage,
both for the poet and the reader.
• Written in October 1816, this is the first entirely
successful (surviving) poem he wrote. John Middleton
Murry called it "one of the finest sonnets in the English
language."
• Analysis
• As a Petrarchan or Italian sonnet, "On First
Looking into Chapman's Homer" falls into two
parts--an octet (eight lines) and a sestet (six
lines). The octet describes Keats's reading
experience before reading Chapman's
translation and the sestet contrasts his
experience of reading it.
• The octet stresses Keats's wide reading
experience; for example he says "MUCH have I
TRAVELED," meaning that he has read a great
deal. What other words/phrases in the octet also
indicate his extensive traveling (reading)
experience? Note he has traveled both on land
and sea.
• The Octet (lines 1-8)
• Much have I traveled in the realms of gold
• The phrase "realms of gold" functions in a number of ways.
"Realms" starts the image cluster of locations--"states," "kingdoms"
"demesnes." These words, as well as "in fealty," suggest political
organization. The phrase also symbolizes the world of literature or, if
you prefer, imagination. What is Keats saying about the value of this
world., i.e., why describe it as realms of gold, rather than of lead or
brass, for instance? Why does he use the plural "realmS," rather
than the singular "realm"?
• Finally, "realms of gold" anticipates the references in the sestet to
the Spanish Conquistadores in the New World, for whom the lust for
gold was a primary motive. The repetition of "l" sounds in
"travelled," "realms," and "gold" emphasizes the idea and ties the
words together.
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And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
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Round many western islands have I been
• Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
• The high, even holy function that poets fulfill is indicated by their
being the servants of a god, Apollo, and having sworn to follow him
(with the suggestion of their having consecrated their lives to him).
"Fealty," in addition, indicates their dedication to Apollo and, by
extension, to their calling, the writing of poetry.
• With the reference to poets, Keats moves from those who read (or
who experience through poets' imaginations) to those who create
poetry (or who express their own imaginations). Then the poem
narrows to one particular poet who rules the realm of poetry, i.e.,
whose genius and inspired poetry raise him above even dedicated
poets.
• Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
• To emphasize the extent of Homer's genius and his literary
accomplishments, Keats modifies "expanse" (which means
"extensive") with an adjective which also means "extensive," i.e., the
adjective "wide."
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That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
• "Deep-browed" refers to Homer's intellect. (We use the adjective
"deep" colloquially with a similar meaning today, in such phrases as
"a deep thought" or "she's a deep thinker.")
• Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
• By breathing in the "pure serene," he makes it a
part of himself; would the same effect be
achieved if he walked or ran through Homer's
demesne (his poetry)? What is Keats saying
about the necessity of poetry (how important is
breathing)?
• This line and the next line contrast Keats's
knowledge of Homer's reputation and his
experiencing the genius of Homer's poetry in
Chapman's translation. What are your
assocations with the words "pure" and "serene"-positive, negative, neutral? Note that these
words apply to both the poetry of Homer and the
translation by Chapman.
• Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold;
• The Sestet (lines 9-14)
• Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
• "Then" moves the poem to a new idea, to the consequences or the
results of reading Chapman's translation. At the same time, "then"
connects the sestet to the octet and so provides a smooth transition
from one section of the poem to the other. In this line and the next
line, reading Chapman's translation has revealed a new dimension
or world to Keats, which he expresses by extending the world to
include the heavens.
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When a new planet swims into his ken;
• To get a sense of Keats' excitement and joy at the discovery of
Homer via Chapman, imagine the moment of looking up into the sky
and seeing a planet--which has been unknown till that moment. Also
imagine the moment of struggling up a mountain, reaching the top
and beholding--not land, as you expected--but an expanse of ocean,
reaching to the horizon and beyond. What would that moment of
discovery, that moment of revelation of a new world, that moment of
enlarging the world you knew, feel like?
• The planet "swims" into view. Though the astronomer is actively
looking (as Keats actively read), yet the planet, which has always
been there, comes into his view. The image of swimming is part of
the water imagery, starting with the voyages of line 3 to the Pacific
Ocean in the ending.
• Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
• Since the discovery of the Pacific is a visual experience, Keats
emphasizes Cortez's eyes. What kind of eyesight does an eagle
have (is it different from that of an owl or a bat, for instance)?
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He stared at the Pacific--and all his men
• Why does Cortez "stare," rather than just look at or glance at the
Pacific? Does Keats's error in identifying Cortez as discovering the
ocean detract significantly from this poem?
• Look'd at each other with a wild surmise-• What is the impact of this discovery on Cortez's men? Why are they
silent? Why do they look at each other with "WILD surmise"? What
does the adjective "wild" suggest about their feelings on seeing the
Pacific, about the impact of that discovery on them?
• Silent, upon a peak in Darien.
• The image of Cortez and his men standing
overwhelmed is sharply presented. Note
the contrast of Chapman's "loud and bold
voice" in the last line of the octet and the
"silence" of Cortez and his men in the last
line of the poem.
• Ode on a Grecian Urn
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THOU still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
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Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? 10
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Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave 15
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 20
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 25
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. 30
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Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea-shore, 35
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return. 40
O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! 45
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'
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希腊古瓮颂
你委身“寂静”的、完美的处子，
受过了“沉默”和“悠久”的抚育，
呵，田园的史家，你竟能铺叙
一个如花的故事，比诗还瑰丽：
在你的形体上，岂非缭绕着
古老的传说，以绿叶为其边缘；
讲着人，或神，敦陂或阿卡狄？
呵，是怎样的人，或神！在舞乐前
多热烈的追求！少女怎样地逃躲！
怎样的风笛和鼓谣！怎样的狂喜！
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听见的乐声虽好，但若听不见
却更美；所以，吹吧，柔情的风笛；
不是奏给耳朵听，而是更甜，
它给灵魂奏出无声的乐曲；
树下的美少年呵，你无法中断
你的歌，那树木也落不了叶子；
卤莽的恋人，你永远、永远吻不上，
虽然够接近了——但不必心酸；
她不会老，虽然你不能如愿以偿，
你将永远爱下去，她也永远秀丽！
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呵，幸福的树木！你的枝叶
不会剥落，从不曾离开春天；
幸福的吹笛人也不会停歇，
他的歌曲永远是那么新鲜；
呵，更为幸福的、幸福的爱！
永远热烈，正等待情人宴飨，
永远热情地心跳，永远年轻；
幸福的是这一切超凡的情态：
它不会使心灵餍足和悲伤，
没有炽热的头脑，焦渴的嘴唇。
这些人是谁呵，都去赶祭祀？
这作牺牲的小牛，对天鸣叫，
你要牵它到哪儿，神秘的祭司？
花环缀满着它光滑的身腰。
是从哪个傍河傍海的小镇，
或哪个静静的堡寨山村，
来了这些人，在这敬神的清早？
呵，小镇，你的街道永远恬静；
再也不可能回来一个灵魂
告诉人你何以是这么寂寥。
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哦，希腊的形状！唯美的观照！
上面缀有石雕的男人和女人，
还有林木，和践踏过的青草；
沉默的形体呵，你象是“永恒”
使人超越思想：呵，冰冷的牧歌！
等暮年使这一世代都凋落，
只有你如旧；在另外的一些
忧伤中，你会抚慰后人说：
“美即是真，真即是美，”这就包括
你们所知道、和该知道的一切。
• (1) Main idea
• In this poem Keats shows the contrast between the
permanence of art and the transience of human passion.
The poet has absorbed himself into the timeless
beautiful scenery on the antique Grecian urn: the lovers,
musicians and worshippers carved on the urn exist
simultaneously and for ever in their intensity of joy. They
are unaffected by time, stilled in expectation. This is at
once the glory and the limitation of the world conjured up
by an object of art. The urn celebrates but simplifies
intuitions of ecstasy by seeming to deny our painful
knowledge of transience and suffering. But in the last
stanza, the urn becomes a "Cold Pastoral", which
presents his ambivalence about time and the nature of
beauty.
• The poem can be divided into two parts, with the first 4
stanzas part I, and the last stanza as part II. In the first
part, Keats looks at the urn subjectively; in the second
part he looks at it objectively. As a result of both ways of
observation, he is finally able to see it as "a friend to man,
to whom thou say'st / Beauty is truth, truth beauty".
• (2) Comprehension notes
• (A) In the first stanza, the poem's narrator is looking at the urn and
meditating on it. His first reaction is a general one. The Urn has
scenes sculptured on it, so he wants to know who the persons are,
what they are doing, and where they are. The narrator expects the
urn to answer them, for he thinks the urn as a Sylvan historian, can
tell a flowery tale. But the questions are not answered.
• (B) In the second stanza, the word "therefore" in the second line
concludes a poetic argument in which silence, having symbolized
the timeless and unmoving, is succeeded by music as an expression
of activity and passion. The second half of this stanza and the whole
of the third detail this conclusion and connect it with the instances
cut in the urn, the fair youth, the trees, the boughs, and the happy
melodist.
• (C) In the third stanza, there is a relaxation of tension, a blurring of
the fineness and accuracy of the registration, and a certain hectic
and feverish quality, panting, and cloyed, burning and parching,
return too sharply and too immediately to the poet's personal life or
this changing society.
• (D) The fourth stanza blends the natural world in "green alter" with
the traditional piety of ordinary people implicit in the little town and
the emptied streets. The supernatural and natural are seen to be
stayed in an unbroken line. The procession to the shrine, the simple
Greek scene leading upward to a more mysterious plane of being, is
realized with exquisite lucidity, economy and effect. The emptied
town naturally brings up the silence investing it, the silence which
was a key image in opening and developing the theme. The poet
uses it as a means of modulating both the theme and the reader's
attention, from the decorated surface of the urn towards its total
structure and meaning which hold a permanent significance for
mankind.
• (E) In the fifth stanza, Keats is seeing the urn as a piece of fine art
objectively--he is seeing it as a lovely object, worthy of his attention
not because the scene is relevant to his subjective feelings but
because it is lovely as an urn. As a beautiful vase, it lures Keats into
an impersonal experience of beauty. Keats specifies that the urn
"dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity" and the comparison
with eternity is very significant. In the first section, Keats has been
concerned with temporality, centering on the theme of time and the
stopping of time, the rejecting of stopping of time as ideal. In the
final stanza he arrives at a true perception of it as an "Attic shape", a
"Cold pastoral". This newly-won perception of, the urn is both its
truth and its beauty.
• Ode To A Nightingale
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk
'Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness,-That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless,
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
II O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
• Cool'd a long age in the deep-delved earth,
• Tasting of Flora and the country green,
• Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
• O for a beaker full of the warm South,
• Full of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
• With beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
• And purple-stained mouth
• That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
• And with thee fade away into the forest dim:
•
III Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
• What thou among the leaves hast never known,
• The weariness, the fever, and the fret
• Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;
• Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
• Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
• Where but to think is to be full of sorrow
• And leaden-eyed despairs,
• Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
• Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.
IV
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
VI cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
• Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
• But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
• Wherewith the seasonable month endows
• The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
• White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
• Fast fading violets cover'd up in leaves;
• And mid-May's eldest child,
• The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
• The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.
VI
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-To thy high requiem become a sod.
VII Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
• No hungry generations tread thee down;
• The voice I hear this passing night was heard
• In ancient days by emperor and clown:
• Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
• Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
• She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
• The same that oft-times hath
• Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
• Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.
•
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•
•
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•
VIII
Forlorn! the very word is like a bell
To toll me back from thee to my sole self!
Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.
Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
Fled is that music:--Do I wake or sleep?
• 夜莺颂
• I
我的心在痛，困顿和麻木
刺进了感官，有如饮过毒鸠，
又象是刚刚把鸦片吞服，
于是向着列斯忘川下沉：
并不是我嫉妒你的好运，
而是你的快乐使我太欢欣－－
因为在林间嘹亮的天地里，
你呵，轻翅的仙灵，
你躲进山毛榉的葱绿和荫影，
放开歌喉，歌唱着夏季。
• II
• III
哎，要是有一口酒！那冷藏
在地下多年的清醇饮料，
一尝就令人想起绿色之邦，
想起花神，恋歌，阳光和舞蹈！
要是有一杯南国的温暖
充满了鲜红的灵感之泉，
杯沿明灭着珍珠的泡沫，
给嘴唇染上紫斑；
哦，我要一饮而离开尘寰，
和你同去幽暗的林中隐没：
远远地、远远隐没，让我忘掉
你在树叶间从不知道的一切，
忘记这疲劳、热病、和焦躁，
这使人对坐而悲叹的世界；
在这里，青春苍白、消瘦、死亡，
而“瘫痪”有几根白发在摇摆；
在这里，稍一思索就充满了
忧伤和灰色的绝望，
而“美”保持不住明眸的光彩，
新生的爱情活不到明天就枯凋。
• IV
• V
去吧！去吧！我要朝你飞去，
不用和酒神坐文豹的车驾，
我要展开诗歌底无形羽翼，
尽管这头脑已经困顿、疲乏；
去了！呵，我已经和你同往！
夜这般温柔，月后正登上宝座，
周围是侍卫她的一群星星；
但这儿却不甚明亮，
除了有一线天光，被微风带过，
葱绿的幽暗，和苔藓的曲径。
我看不出是哪种花草在脚旁，
什么清香的花挂在树枝上；
在温馨的幽暗里，我只能猜想
这个时令该把哪种芬芳
赋予这果树，林莽，和草丛，
这白枳花，和田野的玫瑰，
这绿叶堆中易谢的紫罗兰，
还有五月中旬的娇宠，
这缀满了露酒的麝香蔷薇，
它成了夏夜蚊蚋的嗡萦的港湾。
• VI
• VII
我在黑暗里倾听：呵，多少次
我几乎爱上了静谧的死亡，
我在诗思里用尽了好的言辞，
求他把我的一息散入空茫；
而现在，哦，死更是多么富丽：
在午夜里溘然魂离人间，
当你正倾泻着你的心怀
发出这般的狂喜！
你仍将歌唱，但我却不再听见－－
你的葬歌只能唱给泥草一块。
永生的鸟呵，你不会死去！
饥饿的世代无法将你蹂躏；
今夜，我偶然听到的歌曲
曾使古代的帝王和村夫喜悦；
或许这同样的歌也曾激荡
露丝忧郁的心，使她不禁落泪，
站在异邦的谷田里想着家；
就是这声音常常
在失掉了的仙域里引动窗扉：
一个美女望着大海险恶的浪花。
• VIII
呵，失掉了！这句话好比一声钟
使我猛醒到我站脚的地方！
别了！幻想，这骗人的妖童，
不能老耍弄它盛传的伎俩。
别了！别了！你怨诉的歌声
流过草坪，越过幽静的溪水，
溜上山坡；而此时，它正深深
埋在附近的溪谷中：
噫，这是个幻觉，还是梦寐？
那歌声去了：－－我是睡？是醒？
• The Writing of "Ode to a Nightingale"
• Charles Brown, a friend with whom Keats was living when he
composed this poem, wrote,
• In the spring of 1819 a nightingale had built her nest near my house.
Keats felt a tranquil and continual joy in her song; and one morning
he took his chair from the breakfast table to the grass-plot under a
plum-tree, where he sat for two or three hours. When he came into
the house, I perceived he had some scraps of paper in his hand,
and these he was quietly thrusting behind the books. On inquiry, I
found those scraps, four or five in number, contained his poetic
feeling on the song of our nightingale.
• Analysis: "Ode to a Nightingale"
• A major concern in "Ode to a Nightingale" is Keats's perception of
the conflicted nature of human life, i.e., the interconnection or
mixture of pain/joy, intensity of feeling/numbness or lack of feeling,
life/death, mortal/immortal, the actual/the ideal, and
separation/connection.
• In this ode, Keats focuses on immediate, concrete sensations and
emotions, from which the reader can draw a conclusion or
abstraction. Does the experience which Keats describes change the
dreamer? As reader, you must follow the dreamer's development or
his lack of development from his initial response to the nightingale to
his final statement about the experience.
• More Analysis of "Ode to a Nightingale"
• Rhyme Scheme: ababcdecde
• Meter: iambic pentameter except for the eighth line of each stanza
which is iambic trimeter--why?
• Stanza 1: Poet is depressed (this is a disturbing pattern with Keats).
He makes an allusion in line 4 to Lethe, a river flowing from the
Greek underworld; it's also known as the river of forgetfulness, for
those who drink from it forget everything. The allusion coincides with
one of the themes of the poem, Keats' desire to forget everything as
he listens to a bird sing, or as he writes poetry.
• Stanza 1: Line 5 is an apostrophe to the nightingale whose
happiness causes him to "singest of summer in full throated ease"
(10). The nightingale is referred to as a "light-winged Dryad of the
trees" (7). In Greek Mythology, Dryads are the female spirits of
nature (nymphs) who preside over forests and groves. The two
mythological references establish a surreal mood--that state
between reality and dreaming perhaps. This supports the theme that
the poet wants to escape reality, and does.
• Stanza 2: The key word in stanza 2, the item to which Keats refers
to as "a draught of vintage that hath been / Cooled a long age in the
deep-delved earth / tasting of Flora and the country green" (11-13) is
Hippocrene. For those of you who don't know: In Greek Mythology,
Hippocrene is the name of a fountain on Mt. Helicon. It was sacred
to the Muses and was formed by the hooves of Pegasus. Drinking
the fountain's water brings forth poetic inspiration.
• Stanza 2: The poet's desire to drink from the fountain asserts his
desire to escape from his problems through poetry: "That I might
drink, and leave the world unseen / And with thee fade away into the
forest dim" (19-20). Thee in this citation refers to the nightingale.
• Stanza 3: The poet emphasizes his desires in stanza 3, wishing to
go with the nightingale who has never experienced the despair and
sadness of "The weariness, the fever, and the fret... / Where palsy
shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and
spectre-thin, and dies / Where but to think is to be full of sorrow" (2327). It is because the nightingale has never experienced these
things that he can sing so beautifully.
• Stanza 4: The poet asserts he will escape life "not charioted by
Bacchus... / but on the viewless wings of Poesy" (33). Just in case
you hadn't figured it out, the depressed speaker wishes to escape
through poetry. Bacchus is an allusion to the Roman god of wine
and revelry.
• Stanza 5: The poet has left the physical world and has entered a
world where he sees not with his natural eyes, but with heavenly
eyes.
• Stanza 6: The poet begins to snap out of his trance stating his
desire to die while listening to the nightingale's song. He speaks to
the bird: "Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain-- / To thy
high requiem become a sod" (59-60). The problem with dying is the
poet would no longer be able to listen to the nightingale's song
although he claims it would be "rich to die, / To cease upon the
midnight with no pain, / While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad"
(55-57). The nightingale's song is symbolic of Nature's perfection
and reminiscent of poetry.
• Stanza 7: He contrasts the bird with
himself. Whereas he is sickly and dying
"Thou [the bird] wast not born for death,
immortal bird!" (61). More specifically the
nightingale's song is immortal. It has no
beginning, having been heard by ancient
emporers and by Biblical figures, and in
"faery lands forlorn" (70).
• Stanza 8: The word "forlorn" snaps the
poet out of his trance. The nightingale has
flown and the poet wonders "Was it a
vision, or a waking dream?"
• To Autumn
I
• SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
• Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
• Conspiring with him how to load and bless
• With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
• To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
5
• And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
•
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
• With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
• And still more, later flowers for the bees,
• Until they think warm days will never cease, 10
• For Summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
• Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
•
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
• Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
•
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind; 15
• Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
•
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
•
Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers;
• And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
•
Steady thy laden head across a brook; 20
•
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
•
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
•
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Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day, 25
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; 30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
• 秋颂
雾气洋溢、果实圆熟的秋，
你和成熟的太阳成为友伴；
你们密谋用累累的珠球，
缀满茅屋檐下的葡萄藤蔓；
使屋前的老树背负着苹果，
让熟味透进果实的心中，
使葫芦胀大，鼓起了榛子壳，
好塞进甜核；又为了蜜蜂
一次一次开放过迟的花朵，
使它们以为日子将永远暖和，
因为夏季早填满它们的粘巢。
• 2
•
谁不经常看见你伴着谷仓？
在田野里也可以把你找到，
弥有时随意坐在打麦场上，
让发丝随着簸谷的风轻飘；
有时候，为罂粟花香所沉迷，
你倒卧在收割一半的田垄，
让镰刀歇在下一畦的花旁；
或者．像拾穗人越过小溪，
你昂首背着谷袋，投下倒影，
或者就在榨果架下坐几点钟，
你耐心地瞧着徐徐滴下的酒浆。
3 啊．春日的歌哪里去了？但不要
想这些吧，你也有你的音乐——
当波状的云把将逝的一天映照，
以胭红抹上残梗散碎的田野，
这时啊，河柳下的一群小飞虫
就同奏哀音，它们忽而飞高，
忽而下落，随着微风的起灭；
篱下的蟋蟀在歌唱，在园中
红胸的知更鸟就群起呼哨；
而群羊在山圈里高声默默咩叫；
丛飞的燕子在天空呢喃不歇。
（查良铮译）
• Summary
• Keats’s speaker opens his first stanza by addressing
Autumn, describing its abundance and its intimacy with
the sun, with whom Autumn ripens fruits and causes the
late flowers to bloom. In the second stanza, the speaker
describes the figure of Autumn as a female goddess,
often seen sitting on the granary floor, her hair “soft-lifted”
by the wind, and often seen sleeping in the fields or
watching a cider-press squeezing the juice from apples.
In the third stanza, the speaker tells Autumn not to
wonder where the songs of spring have gone, but
instead to listen to her own music. At twilight, the “small
gnats” hum above the shallows of the river, lifted and
dropped by the wind, and “full-grown lambs” bleat from
the hills, crickets sing, robins whistle from the garden,
and swallows, gathering for their coming migration, sing
from the skies.
• Form
• Like the “Ode on Melancholy,” “To Autumn” is written in a
three-stanza structure with a variable rhyme scheme.
Each stanza is eleven lines long (as opposed to ten in
“Melancholy”, and each is metered in a relatively precise
iambic pentameter. In terms of both thematic
organization and rhyme scheme, each stanza is divided
roughly into two parts. In each stanza, the first part is
made up of the first four lines of the stanza, and the
second part is made up of the last seven lines. The first
part of each stanza follows an ABAB rhyme scheme, the
first line rhyming with the third, and the second line
rhyming with the fourth. The second part of each stanza
is longer and varies in rhyme scheme: The first stanza is
arranged CDEDCCE, and the second and third stanzas
are arranged CDECDDE. (Thematically, the first part of
each stanza serves to define the subject of the stanza,
and the second part offers room for musing,
development, and speculation on that subject; however,
this thematic division is only very general.)
• Themes
• In both its form and descriptive surface, “To Autumn” is one of the
simplest of Keats’s odes. There is nothing confusing or complex in
Keats’s paean to the season of autumn, with its fruitfulness, its
flowers, and the song of its swallows gathering for migration. The
extraordinary achievement of this poem lies in its ability to suggest,
explore, and develop a rich abundance of themes without ever
ruffling its calm, gentle, and lovely description of autumn. Where
“Ode on Melancholy” presents itself as a strenuous heroic quest, “To
Autumn” is concerned with the much quieter activity of daily
observation and appreciation. In this quietude, the gathered themes
of the preceding odes find their fullest and most beautiful expression.
• “To Autumn” takes up where the other odes leave off. Like the
others, it shows Keats’s speaker paying homage to a particular
goddess—in this case, the deified season of Autumn. The selection
of this season implicitly takes up the other odes’ themes of
temporality, mortality, and change: Autumn in Keats’s ode is a time
of warmth and plenty, but it is perched on the brink of winter’s
desolation, as the bees enjoy “later flowers,” the harvest is gathered
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.
The understated sense of inevitable loss in that final line makes it
one of the most moving moments in all of poetry; it can be read as a
simple, uncomplaining summation of the entire human condition.
• Despite the coming chill of winter, the late warmth of autumn
provides Keats’s speaker with ample beauty to celebrate: the
cottage and its surroundings in the first stanza, the agrarian haunts
of the goddess in the second, and the locales of natural creatures in
the third. Keats’s speaker is able to experience these beauties in a
sincere and meaningful way because of the lessons he has learned
in the previous odes: He is no longer indolent, no longer committed
to the isolated imagination (as in “Psyche”), no longer attempting to
escape the pain of the world through ecstatic rapture (as in
“Nightingale”), no longer frustrated by the attempt to eternalize
mortal beauty or subject eternal beauty to time (as in “Urn”), and no
longer able to frame the connection of pleasure and the sorrow of
loss only as an imaginary heroic quest (as in “Melancholy”).
• In “To Autumn,” the speaker’s experience of beauty refers back to
earlier odes (the swallows recall the nightingale; the fruit recalls joy’s
grape; the goddess drowsing among the poppies recalls Psyche and
Cupid lying in the grass), but it also recalls a wealth of earlier poems.
Most importantly, the image of Autumn winnowing and harvesting (in
a sequence of odes often explicitly about creativity) recalls an earlier
Keats poem in which the activity of harvesting is an explicit
metaphor for artistic creation. In his sonnet “When I have fears that I
may cease to be,” Keats makes this connection directly:
•
•
•
•
•
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactry,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain...
In this poem, the act of creation is pictured as a kind of selfharvesting; the pen harvests the fields of the brain, and books are
filled with the resulting “grain.” In “To Autumn,” the metaphor is
developed further; the sense of coming loss that permeates the
poem confronts the sorrow underlying the season’s creativity. When
Autumn’s harvest is over, the fields will be bare, the swaths with
their “twined flowers” cut down, the cider-press dry, the skies empty.
But the connection of this harvesting to the seasonal cycle softens
the edge of the tragedy. In time, spring will come again, the fields
will grow again, and the birdsong will return. As the speaker knew in
“Melancholy,” abundance and loss, joy and sorrow, song and silence
are as intimately connected as the twined flowers in the fields. What
makes “To Autumn” beautiful is that it brings an engagement with
that connection out of the realm of mythology and fantasy and into
the everyday world. The development the speaker so strongly
resisted in “Indolence” is at last complete: He has learned that an
acceptance of mortality is not destructive to an appreciation of
beauty and has gleaned wisdom by accepting the passage of time.
• 3. Special features
• (1) Keats's poetry is always sensuous, colorful and
rich in imagery, which expresses the acuteness of
his senses. Sight, sound, scent, taste and feeling are
all taken in to give an entire understanding of an
experience.
• (2) Keats has the power of entering the feelings of
others—either human or animal. He declared once
that when he saw a bird on the lawn, he entered
imaginatively into the life of the bird.
• (3) Keats delights to dwell on beautiful words and
phrases, which sound musical. He draws diction,
style and imagery from works of Shakespeare,
Milton and Dante. With vivid and rich images, he
paints poetic pictures full of wonderful color.