Bits of Life 2

F-24 Words-675

the jellies is realized through the simile with the creamy curd. The pure syrups are savoured by the suggestive flavour of the cinnamon conveyed through the sound of tinct. A similar image of taste is used by Keats in his Ode to Melancholy.

“Ay, in the very temple of Delight

Veiled Melancholy has her Sov'ran shrine

Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

Can burst Joys grape against his palate fine.”

The poet is thus able to give clear and vivid utterance to most subtle and ambiguous feeling and it is the union of clearness of vision and complete simplicity of language that gives the poem its power.
In a letter to Richard Woodhouse in 1818 Keats wrote,

“As to the poetical character itself .it is not itself-
It is everything and nothing- it has no character-
It enjoys light and shade, it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair,
high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.”


If we read the poetry of Keats and compare it with that of some of his contemporary poets, we fully understand the significance of the above observation he made. Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote based on the principles they preached. Shelley believed that

“poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world, which implies his taste for spreading the message of the Spirit of freedom and Love in his poetry. Goethe judged Byron from his rustic verse tales as lacking in vision and therefore he is a child. Keats alone wrote of beauty objectively.”
He also said,
“Poetry should be simple, sensuous and passionate. And he practiced it in his poetry. His poetry conveys neither a message nor a theory.”
As a perceptive critic has observed,
“He is the most direct and objective of English poets.”
His preoccupation and concentration in poetry was always with the thought of subsuming beauty, which to him is truth as well. A stanza of shimmering beauty from The Eve of St. Agnes catches our attention spontaneously thus:

“A casement high and triple- arch’d there was,
All garlanded with carven imag’ries
Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot- grass,
And diamonded with paints of quaint device,
Innumerable of stains and splendid dies,
As are the tiger- moth’s deep- damask’d wings;
And in the midst, among thousand heraldries,
And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.”
It is worth our while to note the verbs made of nouns as in “triple- arch’d,” “diamonded”,
“moth’s deep- damask’d wings;” and innumerable others throughout his poetry.

Keats is an adept in conveying the idea of beauty through colour and frozen panorama in art. One can clearly see that Keats is not second hand experience.
It is one of sensuous, emotional and intellectual awareness of life.

Keats uses a language that more than conveys his thought. It enforces it by its movement, sound and imagery. The underlying wealth of thought comes to us with vividness and immediacy. The above description of a casement with its spectacular images of flowers, fruits and thousand heraldries among other things reminds us of another masterpiece of Keats.
In his Ode on a Grecian Urn we find an equally unforgettable passage of immortalized beauty. It reads

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

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?



The urn is decorated in art with a flowery tale which is leaf-fring’d and has both deities and mortals and their mad pursuits.

In the same poem he makes a declaration that Beauty is truth and truth beauty, which has ever since been acknowledged the world over as the most thoughtful and insightful observation ever made by him.

And so we move on to Porphyro who is intent on taking