John Keat's Poetry Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2000 words

John Keat's Poetry - Essay Example It shows that ripeness for Keats is both a varied and an ordered concept. Keats was greatly influenced by Hellenism and English translations of Greek literature. The ancient Greeks called their country Hellas and themselves Hellenes. Keats was a Greek by instinct. His borrow of subjects from Greek mythology for his Endymion and Hyperion is not as significant as his total absorption in the spirit of ancient mythology, which, indeed, is a kind of primitive poetry. The world of Greek paganism lives in his verse with its frank sensuousness and joys of life, with its mysterious oracular messages and eternal questionings of the natural world. With unrivalled felicity he recreates the blind faith and fervor of the ancient pagans and the sensuous character of their rituals in his Ode to Psyche. The faculty of imagination which attributes human qualities to the objects of nature is called anthropomorphic. In mythology, Indian or Greek, this faculty finds the fullest play. Keats possessed this anthropomorphic faculty to a very remarkable degree. He hardly ever remained long in the domain of the abstract, as it is found from his Autumn Ode. It is only in the first line that autumn is an abstraction or the 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'. ... Keats possessed this anthropomorphic faculty to a very remarkable degree. He hardly ever remained long in the domain of the abstract, as it is found from his Autumn Ode. It is only in the first line that autumn is an abstraction or the 'Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness'. In the very second line, autumn is found conspiring with the maturing sun as a close bosom-friend. In stanza 2, autumn appears as a harvester, a reaper, a gleaner and a cider maker. These personifications are so different from the cold and frigid personifications of the eighteenth century poetry. Keats' autumn is like Pan of Greek mythology, to which we owe its vegetative plenty, its mellow fruitfulness, its familiar sights and its characteristic music. The three stanzas in Ode to Autumn show a gradual rise of thought. In the first stanza, autumn is viewed as the season itself, doing the season's work, bringing all the fruits of the earth to maturing in readiness for harvesting. In the second stanza, autumn, personified in a woman's shape, is present at the various operations of the vintage. In the last stanza, the close of the year is associated with sunset; the songs of spring are feeling of the continuous life of nature, which externally renews itself in insect, animal and bird. The close of the ode, though solemn, breathes the spirit of hope. Romanticism has been defined as the "Renaissance of wonder", i.e. re-awakening of interest in the supernatural. For the romantics, there are more things in heaven and earth than people dream of. There is a world of unseen behind and above the world of the senses. Keats was also fully indulged in that super sensuous world. It is the magic and mystery, the belief in ghosts and fairies, of the middle ages, that captivated his heart. The