Shelley ‘Ode to The

UNIT 4 KEATS: ‘ODE ON A GRECIAN URN’, West Wind’, ‘To A

‘ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE’ Skylark’

Structure
4.0 Objectives
4.1 Introduction
4.2 John Keats
4.3 A note on Keats’s Odes
4.4 Ode to a Nightingale
4.4.1 Text

4.4.2 Interpretation

4.4.3 Poetic Devices

4.5 Ode to Autumn

4.5.1 Text

4.5.2 Interpretation

4.5.3 Poetic Devices

4.6 Ode On a Grecian Urn

4.7 Let Us Sum Up
4.8 Answers to Check Your Progress
4.9 Suggested Readings

4.0 OBJECTIVES
In this Unit, we shall discuss two odes of John Keats: Ode to Nightingale and
Ode to Autumn. After completing the study of this unit you will be able to:
• discuss the development of Keats’ thought in the two odes
• appreciate Keats’ sensuous imagery which is the characteristic feature of
his poetry and his poetic craftsmanship.

4.1 INTRODUCTION
In the earlier units of this block, we have discussed Romantic poetry with
special reference to Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron and Shelley. In this unit
which is the last in the series on romantic poets, we shall discuss Keats’ poetry
which is marked for his skills in word painting, rich sensual imagery, and verbal
coinage. We shall also discuss the development of thought in the two odes.
We would like you to first read the poem. Then you should read it again with
the help of glossary, interpretation of lines and words given in the unit. After
you have followed the interpretation, read the note on poetic devices. After
you have read and understood the poem and critical comments, write down 187
British Romantic the answers to the exercises. Your answers should then be checked with the
Literature III
answers given by us at the end of the unit.

4.2 JOHN KEATS

John Keats (1795-1821) is one of the most sensuous poets in English whose
poetry is remarkable for its colour and imagery. The distinctive quality in Keats
is the ability to convey his vision as a sensuous experience. He focuses on
several sense impressions relating to an object and thereby gives the reader a
full apprehension of it. His early works (particularly Endymion) were harshly
criticised, but by the time he was twenty-four, he had won recognition for his
great odes—On Melancholy, On A Grecian Urn, To A Nightingale and To
Autumn. All these odes were written in his most creative year of 1819. Seriously
ill with tuberculosis, Keats died in Rome when he was just twenty-six.

4.3 A NOTE ON KEATS’ ODES

In the introductory unit of Block 1, you studied about different forms of poetry.
Can you recall what an ode is? An ode is a form of lyric, a poem of address of
an elaborate structure. Here in these two odes, Keats is addressing a nightingale
and the season of autumn respectively. The poetic device he employs is known
as the apostrophe (a figure of speech in which someone absent or something or
an idea is addressed as though it is present and able to respond to the address).
Keats’ odes are ten-line stanzas with the first quatrain rhyming abab and the
following sestet having a cdecde rhyme scheme. His odes are remarkable for
their fusion of intensity of feeling and concreteness of detail and description.
They also possess a dramatic quality for we are made aware of the presence of
two voices engaged in a lyrical debate. Can you identify the two voices in the
‘‘Ode to a Nightingale’’ keeping in view the outline we have given in 11.4?
The first voice pays rich tribute to the song of a nightingale. It speaks of
the poet’s identification with the bird. The voice at the end is sceptical and
it questions whether the poet had genuinely experienced heightened feelings
of ecstasy or was it but a subjective half-dream. The dramatic tension in the
poem is built around the poet’s initial identification with the bird and his later
separateness from it.

4.4 ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE

Ode To A Nightingale is a poem in eight stanzas.
Stanza I describes the poet’s excitement as he listens to the song of a nightingale.
Stanza II & III express the poet’s wish to enter into the world of the nightingale
and thereby remain oblivious of the weariness and fretful stir of human existence.
He asks for a draught of wine that can induce in him a state of drunkenness so
that he can fly far away into the blissful world of the bird. Stanza IV records the
poet’s recourse to poetic fancy as an alternative to aid him in his flight into the
realm of the nightingale. The poetic fancy leads him to the bird in its perch high
up among the tree tops where he can see the moon and the stars. But this does
not last long and he wakes out of it to return to gloom and darkness on earth.
Stanza V shows the poet’s separateness from the bird. This appeal to poetic
188 fancy has not liberated him from the human world of pain and misery, but has
helped him to respond with delight to the naturalistic world, full of colourful Keats: ‘Ode On A
Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
flowers. Stanza VI expresses Keats morbid impulse to die at that very moment
To A Nightingale’
of experiencing an intense joy and empathy with nature so that he can cease to
experience pain hereafter. The poet says that it is rich to die in his present state
of heightened ecstasy. But alongside this death wish comes the still greater
painful awareness that death marks not only severance from the pains of life but
also from the bird and its sweet song as well.
Stanza VII affirms the permanence of the bird’s song in this world. It is not
that the bird is immortal, but its song is. It had thrilled successive generations
in the past and shall continue to thrill successive generations in the future.
Stanza VIII shows the poet waking up from his fancy and becoming aware that
the nightingale has fled and he can no longer listen to it. The poem concludes
with an unanswered question regarding the reality of his experience. If it was
a genuinely heightening experience or whether it was all just a vision and a
dream.
The movement of the poem is related to the poet’s movement
i) from the ideal happy world of the nightingale to the dull everyday world of
pain, misery and suffering and
ii) from a state of ecstasy to a state of forlornness (desolation)
The turn of these two movements comes at the end of the fourth stanza. The
first four stanzas assert the poet’s identification with the bird and its song and
the latter four stanzas lay emphasis upon the poet’s separateness from the bird.
The bird is present only in the first section and it is absent in the rest of the
poem. Before we begin our analysis of the poem in detail, let us look at some
aspects of Keats’ Odes. This note (11.3) is applicable to both the odes in your
course of study.

4.4.1 Text
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, (5)

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. (10)

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British Romantic O, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
Literature III
Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora an the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sunburnt mirth!
O for a beaker full of the warm South, (15)

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:
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 tomorrow,

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,

190 Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light, Keats: ‘Ode On A
Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown To A Nightingale’

Through verdurous Blooms and winding mossy ways.

I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Where with 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.

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.

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!

No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this pasing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown: 191
British Romantic Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
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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.

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?
Glossary
(7) Drayad: a wood nymph, a beautiful goddess who inhabits the forests
(11) vintage: wine of excellent quality
(13) Flora: Goddess of vegetation and flowers
(1) Hippocrene—a mythical fountain in Greece, sacred to get
(51) Darkling: in darkness.

4.4.2 Interpretation
Lines
1-4 express the poet’s longing to lapse into a state of forgetfulness so
that he can give up the world and its attendant pain and fly into the
world of the nightingale. Can you pick up the words that stress upon
the impulse to seek oblivion’? “heart aches”, “drowsy numbness”,
“pains”, “dull opiate”, “hemlock” (poison) and “Lethe-wards had
sunk”—all these express the poet’s wish for a state of oblivion and
192 thereof, for a movement into the world of the nightingale.
 The physical sensations of aches and pains are juxtaposed with Keats: ‘Ode On A
the state of drowsy numbness and a drugged state. How does Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
the poet reconcile a state of conscious pain with that of inertness
and insensibility? Why does he do so? Both the states—of pain
and numbness—have a common source in the ecstatic joy of the
nightingale. The poet’s mood is one of drugged languor and has
been occasioned by his empathetic response to the happiness of the
bird. The poet wishes to merge his identity with that of the bird.
In these opening lines, the identification is not total; he is aware
of his self (which explains his pains and aches), but gradually the
self-consciousness fades as a drowsy numbness overtakes him and
the possibility of total identification is on the rise as the later lines
in the stanza explain.
Lines
5-10 these lines explain what had given rise to these strange, morbid
feelings in the poet. The poet says that the feelings of depression
in him are not due to envy of the bird’s happiness, but because
he is “too happy” in its happiness. The poet’s earlier mood of
despondency seems to be perverse in the context of what gives rise
to it. The mood in the opening quatrain contradicts the latter mood
in the sestet.
7 “light-winged Dryad”: “light-winged” refers to the bird’s quickness
in flight. It also refers to a spirit of light-heartedness in contrast to
the heavy drugged feeling of the earlier lines.
“beechen green”: the green colour of the beech tree which carries
associations of freshness. “shadows numberless”: “shadows”
suggest thick foliage which caste the shadows.
“summer”:in England summer is associated with colour and
warmth (Recall Shakespeare’s use of the word in his Sonnet 18)
“full- throatedease”: is in contrast to the cares and pains of the
world as though the bird is immune to all suffering.
0-20 Here the poet seeks a prolongation of his happy state by asking for
a beaker of wine from the South (of France). But towards the end
of the second stanza (19-20) his wish for a fate of intoxication is to
forget his conscious self and thereafter to fade away with the bird
into the forest.
12 Do you recognise the alliteration here?
“deep-delved” almost suggests the strokes of spade digging the
earth. It also suggests the cooling effect on the wine made out of
grapes grown in the warm south as a result of storing it underground.
Keats is remarkable for his attention to concrete details in this
description of the vintage wine. He associates the wine with
Flora (goddess of vegetation and flowers), country green, Dance,
Provencal song (song of Provence in medieval France), the warm
South—all associations of warmth, high spirits and excitement.
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British Romantic 16 “Hippocrene”: a fountain in Greece, sacred to the Muses and
Literature III Apollo.
To drink off the Hippocrene is to get poetic inspiration.
Can you trace the progression of thought and imagery in these
two stanzas? “Throat” and “summer” from the preceding stanza
(1-10) lead to thoughts of wine produced in the South of France.
The longing for the “warm south” leads him backwards in time
to the song of the medieval poets of Provence and still back into
the classical age when the poets used to drink from the fountain
Hippocrene to get inspired. The poet desires that wine and poetic
imagination together might help him escape into the world of the
nightingale. Ode to a Nightingale is the supreme expression in all
of Keats’ poetry of the impulse to imaginatively escape that flies
in the face of knowledge of human limitation. (Stuart M. Sperry:
Keats the Poet).
This impulse finds concrete expression in Stanza IV (L.31-33)
Keats is one of the most sensuous of the English Poets. Here in
this description of the vintage wine from the warm south-cool
and heady, bubbling and purple-coloured, Keats is at his sensuous
best.
21-30 (stanza III) reiterate the poet’s desire to fade far away and forget
the fretful fever and stir of the world. Wine is sought as an opiate to
support him in his desire for oblivion so as to forget all the painful
experiences of life which include a poignant reference to his brother
Tom’s death (L.26) and “where but to think is full of sorrow” (27).
The poet imagines the bird to be happy because it does not belong
to the world of the humans. To be human is to experience “the
weariness, fret and fever” of existence.
The poet is also aware that he is human and therefore even if he
were to fly away into the nightingale’s world, he cannot forever
stay there in happiness. His depression is thus implicit in his
desire for escape. Keats is seen struggling against the inevitable
impermanence of human beauty, youth and happiness. He is striving
for some enduring principle of permanence which he associates
with the song of the nightingale.
31-40 (Stanza IV) The thoughts of sickness, old age and death make him
seek an alternative to wine in his search for a supporting aid to
wing him to the happy sojourn of the nightingale. The poet turns
to poetic fancy to bridge the division between him and the bird.
The creative activity arising out of his appeal to poetic imagination
limits itself to a three-line ornate composition at the end of which
Keats is back on the ground again, far away from the nightingale’s
habitation. Initially, he soars high on the wings of poetic fancy to
the tree tops where the nightingale perches, but before long he is
back on earth where there is no light other than what flickers of the
moonlight through the branches and the leaves of the trees.
194
33 “viewless wings of poesy”: Keats speaks of the wings of poesy as Keats: ‘Ode On A
invisible, because the flight (of imagination) is too high for a vision Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
of the earth to be visible. The poet expects to soar high into the far
distant, almost ethereal world of the bird aided by poesy.
“poesy”: Keats uses the word rather in an affected sense to
mean poetry. There is something of a self-conscious effort in the
description of the moon and the stars.
34 Human brain cannot take in the broad sweep of poetic fancy. Despite
its retarding effect, the poet’s imagination takes him swiftly to the
abode of the nightingale on tree tops.
38-40 But poetic fancy cannot last long. It is just as temporary as the effect
of wine on him. He is grounded on earth where there is neither light
nor darkness, other than whatever filters the moon and the stars
through the leaves of the trees.
41-50 (Stanza V) Keats’ response to sensuous beauty of the physical
world is at its best in this stanza. Despite the semi-darkness around,
he is able to imagine the flowers and their colours through their
sweet scent. Keats said that when the primary sense of sight is
absent, the other senses are intensified and provide “much room
for imagination”. In this stanza, you can recognise Keats’ olfactory
sense, his auditory sense and his sense of taste at work even as he
confesses that “I cannot see what flowers are at my feet”. (41) The
sound of the buzzing flies, caught by the auditory sense is expressed
through the employment of sibilant words like “murmurous”;
“Flies”, “summer” and “eves”. These words give the onomatopoeic
effect of the bees buzzing around.
Identify the sensuous imagery in this stanza. What are the adjectives
Keats employs to evoke sensuous excitement? Phrases like “soft
incense”, “dewy wine”, “ white hawthorn”, “pastoral eglantine”
and “fast-fading violets” convey concrete physical details of the
flowers.
Stanza VI
The colourful flowers, the musk-rose and dewy wine conjure up
thoughts of luxury and inebriation which for Keats are portentous
signals as they once again lead him towards thoughts of death. The
line of thinking in this stanza bears a close resemblance to stanzas
II and III. As he listens to the bird’s song in darkness, he feels that
it is the opportune time to die, “to cease upon the midnight with no
pain”.
He says that it seems rich to die at that very moment when he
is at the heights of ecstasy, experiencing a rich and sensuous
excitement. To descend from that state of total bliss will be only
painful, analogous to a death-in-life state. (You can now recall his
earlier description of a state of numbness in stanza I.) Hence the
poet seeks an alternative life-in-death state where to be dead at
195
British Romantic this moment is to preserve for posterity this unsullied moment of
Literature III ecstasy and glory.
Line
62 “half in love”: Why does Keats say that he is only half in love with
death? Read through the stanza. You will discover Keats’ offer of
explanation in the last two lines. Keats is painfully aware that after
his death, he shall not be able to listen to the bird’s song which will
continue to be heard in the world. Who is dead will be no more
than a requiem.
“easeful death”: (1) Painless death
(2) death that releases him from pain and gives him peace
and rest.
At this moment of total surrender to sensuous excitement, Keats becomes aware
of his separateness from the immortal bird.
Line Stanza VII
71-80 the stanza begins with an ambiguous statement when Keats
addresses the nightingale as the “immortal bird”. But he corrects
himself in line by turning attention to the voice of the bird for it
is the voice that had been heard in the past and shall continue to
be heard in the future even as it is presently heard by the poet.
Tracing the perennial voice of the nightingale, Keats moves from
the present to the past (“emperor and clown”) through the Biblical
times (“Ruth”) and then to remote world of fairies (‘charmed....
faery lands’). The generations pass, but the nightingale’s voice
continues.
76 “The sad heart of Ruth”: Reference to the Old Testament story
of Ruth, the kind and devoted daughter-in-law of Naomi of Moab
near Jerusalem- Ruth instead of turning to her father and mother
after the death of her husband, accompanied her widowed mother-
in-law to the land of Bethlehem. She worked in the field of Bo’az
to earn her living and ultimately was rewarded for her devotion and
kindness to her mother-in-law. Keats reference here is to Ruth in
the fields of Bo’az where she stood gathering the sheaves of corn.
She is sad and lonely having moved far away from her native land
to work in alien fields.
79 Keats opens up the world of the legends, of fairy tales—a world
that is in the subconscious and present in all of us.
80 “forlorn”: Why does the poet describe the faery lands as “forlorn”
These faery lands are forlorn because they are not for men. They
have become inaccessible for no man can ever return to them. The
word “forlorn” connects this stanza to the next and the final one.

196
STANZA VIII Keats: ‘Ode On A
Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
81-90 With the anguished expression of being “forlorn”, he is back to To A Nightingale’
his state of painful awareness that the earthly and the eternal can
never be bridged. All his efforts at identification with the bird have
proved to be of temporary value. As the bird flies to the next valley
and as its song fades, the illusion of oneness with the bird dissolves.
The song that Ruth had heard reminded her of her separation from
her home and the song that had thrilled Keats reminds him of his
separation from the bird. As the song recedes, the poet moves
towards his forlorn self. The poem ends with a question about the
validity of such a heightened experience when it leaves him with a
sense of loss and depression. Keats raises a question that operates
on two levels. It can pertain to the genuineness of that thrilling
experience which the song had given him. He wonders whether it
was all a vision or a dream. He sounds sceptical thinking that the
song had given him just an illusion of ecstasy. On another level the
question may relate to the poet’s perception of the just idle a symbol
of permanence. Such a conception may be just idle whimsies on his
part.
The conflicting tendencies towards mortality as expressed in stanza VI- of
attraction and fear are developed in the last two stanzas. Each one of
them is given prominence separately. Stanza VII pays tributes to the
immortality of the song and thereby stresses the poet’s fascination
for death so that he can remain in that ecstatic moment of identity
with the bird. Stanza VIII contradicts this desire for death as it
registers man’s limitations that can never give him permanent joy
as he imagines to have experienced. The poem thus maintains the
dramatic debate between two voices of the poem. It completes a full
circle as it begins with the experience of the heart and ends with the
questioning of the heart. The exciting song sounds no more than a
“plaintive anthem”, keeping in line with the earlier description of it
as “high requiem’ (L.70).

4.4.3 Poetic Devices

1) This ode is remarkable for its varied allusions—literary, biblical and
mythological. The references to “Hippocrene” and “Bacchus” take us back
to ancient literary works. The Biblical allusion to Ruth and mythological
allusion to “charm’d magic casements, opening on the foam of perilous
seas, in fancy leads forlorn” (79- 80) reinforce the permanence of the
nightingale’s song and juxtapose it with the forlorn misery of human
beings who experience nothing but “the weariness, the fever and fret” of
existence.
2) Keats’ craftsmanship is remarkably displayed in this poem. He is not a poet
of all embracing sensuousness. He rises from the sensuous to the ethereal
and spiritual dimensions and thus has a close affinity with the Greek ideal
of Beauty.

197
British Romantic In this poem we find Keats’s skill in word painting and verbal coinage. A
Literature III good example of this is seen in the phrase “full-throated ease” (L.10). The
song of the nightingale is described in visual imagery. Yet another example
is in the description of the wine in terms of “the blushful Hippocrene” and
“Purple-stained mouth”—where the taste is expressed in visual terms.
Other examples of his skill in verbal coinage include “leaden-eyed” (28)
“Viewless wings of Poesy” (33) “embalmed darkness” (43).
3) Alliteration: “Deep-delved”, “beaded bubbles”...”the fever and the fret”.
4) Diction: Stanza V is remarkable for Keats poetic diction. You can notice the
contrast between such homely words as “the seasonable month” and “soft
incense’’, “dewy win” “embalmed darkness”. Though Keats is literally
referring to the scent of the flowers, these words conjure up thoughts of
luxury and wine.
We can see a similar kind of contrast in stanza VII between the enchantment
and mystery suggested by “charm’d”, “magic”, “faery” and the emotionally
disturbing associations of “perilous” and “forlorn”. All these are in close
link with the homely word “casements”, a word that returns the poet (and
the reader) to reality.
In lines 71-72, out of 18 words that Keats employs, only two have more
than one syllable. The succession of monosyllables is intended to produce
flat, prosaic reality.
Check Your Progress I
1) Give examples of Keats’ skill in word painting and verbal coinage with
reference to Ode to Nightingale. (50 words)
2) Discuss the development of thought in Ode to Nightingale?

4.5 ODE TO AUTUMN (FOR ADDITIONAL

READING)
To Autumn is ranked as one of the finest odes by no less critics than F. Inglis,
Walter Jackson Bate, Douglas Bush, Harold Bloom, Leavis and Robert Bridges.
It was written during the sunny September of 1819. What inspired Keats to write
this ode was a quiet Sunday walk through the stubble fields near Winchester.
Immediately after finishing the poem, he wrote in a letter to Reynolds (21
September, 1819):
“Yesterday....was a grand day for Winchester How beautiful the season is
now—How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without
joking chaste weather—Dian skies—I never lik’d stubble—fields so
much as now—Aye better than the chilly green of the Spring. Somehow
a stubble-plain looks warm—in the same way that some pictures look
warm—This struck me so much in my Sunday’s walk that I composed
upon it”.
Though it seems generally agreed that “To Autumn” is a rich and vivid
description of nature in as much as Keats lets the rich store of sense impressions
198
be absorbed and transmuted in an act of calm, meditative wisdom in a stanzaic Keats: ‘Ode On A
pattern, we can discover that the poem is not only rich in pictorial and sensuous Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
details, but that it has a depth of meaning. It is an affirmation of faith in the
processes of life and change. Only thing is that the affirmation is not made by
asserting it, for that might constitute poetry with “a palpable design” upon us. It
does so by drawing us into experiences that are self-explanatory.
The poems runs in 3 stanzas, each concentrating on a dominant aspect of autumn
and bearing relationship with others.
Stanza1 describes natural objects at their richest and ripest stage. However,
there is a slight implication about the passage of time in “later”,
“warm days will never cease” and reference to summer already
past.
Stanza 2 adds an imaginative element to the description in the form of
personification of the season in several appropriate postures and
settings
Stanza 3 presents the paradox of the season both lingering and passing.
While the stanza is descriptive, its latent theme of transitoriness
and mortality is symbolically dramatised by the passing course of
the day.
To Autumn shares a feature of development with the Ode on
Nightingale. Each of these poems begins with presentation of
realistic circumstances, then moves into an imagined realm, and
ends with a return to the realistic.
Keats’s genius was away from statement and toward description
and in autumn he had the natural symbol for his meanings. To
Autumn is shorter than the other odes and less complex in its
materials, it should he appreciated for its peculiar distinction of
great compression achieved in simple terms.

4.5.1 Text
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,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the bazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more. later flowers for the bees,
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British Romantic Until they think warm days will never cease,
Literature III
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;
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 twined flowers;
And sometime like a gleaner thou lost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watches’ the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
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;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Glossary
Stanza 1
Season of mists: during the season of Autumn, mist gathers on
vegetation, marshy or wet arms in the moorings.
mellow fruitfulness: ripening of fruits
the maturing sun: the warm rays of the sun help in ripening of fruit.
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thatch-eaves : the edges of the roof which overhang the walls-and Keats: ‘Ode On A
cast off water, etc. made of straw or rushes. Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
moss : a kind of greenish plant growing on moist trees,
grounds, etc
gourd: - vegetables like ‘lauki’ in India or pumpkin belong
to the family of gourd plump the hazel shell: - hazel
nuts have shells and the shells swell out when the nut
is matured
sweet kernel: - kernel is the soft part of the hard shell of a nut which
is eaten.
O’er-brimm’d: - over filled
clammy: - sticky because wet
Stanza II
soft winnowing - to winnow is to free the grain from chaff or husk
granary - storehouse where grain is kept
half-reap’d furrow - corn is planted in a furrow—a hollow cut in the soil.
A reaper half reaps the furrow when he stops work to
rest.
hook - instrument with a curve for reaping corn
swath - row of corn
gleaner -a person who gathers ears of corn left over by the
reaper cider press - a machine that takes out the juice
of apples.
oozings - the act of passing slowly through pores, etc.
Stanza III
ay Yes
barred clouds - clouds with strips like bars
stubble plains stubble is stumps of grain or straw left by the reaper
after corn or straw has been gathered. Stubble plains
are fields where stubble is left
rosy hue - colour of rose (red colour)
Choir - song sung in a church it means a chorus here
gnats - insects small in size which fly in marshy places.
river sallows - willow trees (plants with long leaves) that grow by
rivers.
lives or dies - blows or not blows
hedge cricket - an insect that chirps in hedges 201
British Romantic treble soft - highest pitch of voice, soft here means sweet
Literature III
red breast - a small singing bird with a red patch on its breast. a
garden croft - a piece of land enclosed for a garden
swallows - birds which migrate to warmer lands in winter.

4.5.2 Interpretation
Lines 1-6 The first line recalls the cold of the mists and briskly leads to a
description of fruit, the flowers and the bees constituting a lush
and colourful picture of Autumn. Sense of ripeness, growth is
suggested by “maturing sun” reaching its climax as the strain
of the weighty fruit bends the apple trees and loads the vines.
“Bless”further states the richness and fertility with a properly
religious implication. Thereafter Keats moves to the landscape.
The soft ‘f’s’ and ‘r’s’ of—“And fill all fruit with ripeness to
the core” make the images bulge softly in the language like the
fruit itself.
Lines 6-11 Line 6 curves the lushness of “swell and gourd”. “Plump” is a
verb solid enough to touch and puts a restraint on any excess
that Keats might have committed after “swell the gourd”.
The autumn of first stanza is description of a process and an
agricultural conspirer, plotting secretly with the sun to bring
ripeness to a state of saturation. Can you pointout words that
suggest this process?
As process autumn loads, blesses, bends, fills, swells, plumps
and sets budding.
Line 9-11 The only receptive consciousness of all this activity is that of
the bees who sip their aching pleasure to such a glut that they
think “warm days will never cease”, for the honey of harvest
pleasure has “over brimmed” their natural store houses. The
fullness of nature’s own grace, her free and overwhelming gift
of herself is the burden of this stanza. The low sibilants and
thrice repeated ‘mm’ of the last line bring activity into play.
Though the sound of bees is drowsy, their work is not.
If you read the final three lines of the first stanza, you notice
implications about the passage of time. Can you figure out
the words? You must have noticed that the flowers are called
“later”, the bees are assumed to think that “warm days will
never cease” and there is a reference to the summer which has
already passed.
Lines 12-22 The second stanza is a sensuous observation of the consequences
of the process initiated in the first stanza. Autumn is now seen
not as setting the flowers to budding but as a woman amid her
store taking care of the over abundance of harvest. Autumn
is no longer an active process, but a female overcome by the
202 fragrance and soft exhaustion of her own labour. She is “sitting
 careless”, “hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind”. She is a Keats: ‘Ode On A
passive embodiment of the earthly paradise, a place of repose Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
after the sexual and productive activity hinted at by her having
been “close bosom-friend of the maturing sun”. But she is also
the peasant girl drunk with the odours and efforts of gathering,
winnowing, reaping and gleaning. The final four lines of the
stanza take us to the very end of the harvest, the gleaner bearing
her laden head so steadily as to suggest motionlessness even as
she moves. The language catches the gestures and enacts them.
The faint breeze ruffles hair in the soft ‘‘Ts’’ of the line and
sounds in the repeated syllables of “winnowing wind”. The
first seven lines are replete with extended vowels—“drows’d”,
“sound”, “fume” and there are no heavy stresses so that leisurely
movement is suggested.
The final image, autumn as lingering and passing is suggested
in “patient look” with which she watches the last oozing hours
by hours. “Oozing”, or a steady dripping, is, of course, not
unfamiliar as a symbol of the passage of time.
Lines23-33 We have post-harvest sounds, heralding the coming on the
winter. The poet’s attitude towards transience and passing
beauty is implicit in “Where are the songs of Spring” but is
immediately abandoned in “Think not of them, thou hat thy
music too”. The late flowers and poppies of stanzas 1 &2 are
replaced by the barred clouds that bloom the twilight and touch
the stubble-plains with rosy hue. And though the small gnats
mourn in a wail-filled choir, the sound of their mourning is
musically varied by the caprice of light and wind. The poet’s
rendering of the wail is light. The “full grown lambs” are now
ready for their harvest having completed the cycle. The voice
of their bleat comes from a distance “hilly bourne”. So also
the hedge crickets are heard across the exhausted landscape,
the winter singer, the red breast adds his soft treble and the
departing birds close the poem. This is acceptance of process
beyond the possibility of grief. The last stanza looks back to
the concluding lines of Coleridge’s Frost at Midnight, where
we hear: “The red breast sit and sing Betwixt the tufts of snow
on the bare branch Of mossy apple-tree, while the high thatch
Smokes in the sun-thaw.”

4.5.4 Poetic Devices

This ode is remarkable for its imagery which has two characteristics:
comprehensive—using all senses and sensuous—rich in the images of the
immediately physical sensations. The richness of the fruit and the fertility of
the season is brought about in “to load and bless with fruit the vines that round
the thatch—eves run” (3-4), “And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core” (6) and
“swell the gourd” and plump the hazel shells with a sweet kernal” (7-8). The
images bulge softly in our mind’s eye producing lush and colourful pictures.
Words such as “plump”, (7), solid and nutty to touch, and “sweet kernel”, (8)
ready to release the flow of juice in our mouth, evoke a trail of experiences. 203
British Romantic Along with the senses of sight, taste and touch already mobilised, the distant
Literature III buzzing of bees through low sibilants and thrice repeated `mm’ in the last line
of the first stanza invoke our sense of the sound.
Keats’s myth making powers forefront in “Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy
store” associating Autumn with its legends and its myths. Keats, as if, reminds
us of the mystery of the movement and renewal of the seasons. The season is
personified and in contrast to the activities of Autumn listed in the first stanza,
word pictures, images of stillness: a harvester not harvesting, the benevolent
deity is motionless “sitting careless on a granary floor” (14) or asleep on a “half-
reap’d furrow” (16), while its hook “spares the next swath (18), the “gleaner”
keeping “steady” its “laden head” (20), “patient look” (21) and stopping to
watch the slow pressing of the apples into cider as the hours pass, strike us.
In Keats, the sound echoes the sense in the soft ‘f’s’ and ‘r’,‘s’ of “And fill all
fruit with ripeness to the core” (6), the drowsy sound of the bees in the thrice
repeated “mm” sound of “For summer has o’er-brimme’d their clammy cells
(11). Alliteration in “winnowing wind” (15) as if mounts the rhythm slowly to
suggest activity. The rhyming of “wind will find” as if is to make the language
catch the gesture and enact it. The ruffling of hair is suggested in soft ts’ of
“soft-lifted” (15). The extended vowels - “drows’d”, “sound”“fume”, produce
a picture of leisurely behaviour. The sound in “steady” and “laden” (20) echo
firm steps. In the last line of the second stanza we fairly hear the last oozings
(onomatopoeia). The ode is an eleven line stanza, the first quatrain rhyming
‘‘abab’’ and the following septet, with a couplet, catching on to an earlier rhyme
word, just before the last line. The eleven line stanza is long enough to express
a complex modulation of thought but not so long as to run the risk of becoming
isolated poem in itself.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness (a)
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; (b)
Conspiring with him how to load and bless (a)
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run (b)
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees (c)
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core (d)
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells (e)
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more (d)
And still more, later flowers for the bees (c)
Until they think warm days will never cease (c)
For summer has o’er-brimmed their clammy cells (e)
Though the Shakespearean quatrain remains regular, the rhyme scheme in the
septet is made to vary. Thus the ode has a unique combination of a Shakespearean
quatrain and a Petrarchan septet with a couplet.

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Keats’ poetic diction is marked for precision like a molten ore sublimed by Keats: ‘Ode On A
enormous pressure. “Barred cloud” stubble-plains, “rosy hue”, “wailful choir”, Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
“full-grown, lambs”, “gathering swallows” in the third stanza are concrete
images of life unaffected by any thought of death. The mind is free to associate
with the “wailful” mourning of the gnats with a funeral dirge or the swallows
gathering for immigration, but these sounds are more confined to autumn than
to any lament on death. The diction in Keats retains a restraint on thought.
And yet there is no dissociation between senses and the intellect. It is a perfect
integration. His nerve ends maintain contact with the intellect, the thinking goes
on through these images and receives its precise definition and qualification
from images and yet retains a classical restraint on Keats. His Ode to Autumn
does not carry a palpable design on us. The poet is himself completely absent,
there is no “I”, no suggestion of the discursive language in this ode. The power
of self absorption, wonderful sympathy, identification with things he called
“negative capability” he saw as essential to creation of poetry.
Check Your Progress II
1. The ode is objective and descriptive. Comment in not more than 150
words.
2. In this ode, Keats’ pictorial power finds its fullest expression. Comment in
not more than 150 words. )
3. Comment on Keats’ “negative capability”—(50 words)

4.6 ODE ON A GRECIAN UREN

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-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?

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:
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British Romantic Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Literature III
       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!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
         For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
         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.

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,
         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
                Is emptied of this 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.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
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With forest branches and the trodden weed; Keats: ‘Ode On A
Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought To A Nightingale’

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         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.”
INTERPRETATION
Ode on a Grecian is a poem that, on the surface, talks about an urn on which is
some engravings but at the deeper level the poem talks about much more. These
figures carved out on the urn are basically stories. But unlike a typical tale, this
tale is being narrated in a different way altogether. The characters of the tales
are, unlike in the usual tales relating to human emotions, not subjects of time.
To put it simply, the poem operates at two levels: at one level, the poet discusses
the beauty of the picture portrayed on the urn, and on the other level, Keats, or
the persona, narrates the story that is being told by the carved images on the
‘Grecian Urn’. The lovers portrayed on the urn transcend the limitations of time
as they are engravings and not humans with flesh and blood. Since they are now
captured images, and not living, walking humans, these lovers do not have to
be worried about the cycle of life and death. The poet reminds the youth that
he should not regret his inability to kiss the beloved because they have become
eternal in the frozen time. There is a binary opposition between the temporal
and the timeless, physicality and metaphysics. Towards the end of the poem,
the poet draws an easy binary between Old age and Youth, when he talks about
‘burning forehead’ and ‘parching lips’. Interestingly enough, the same urn that,
by capturing the lovers’ images on its body, eternalizes their stories, limits the
pleasure of their love as they are tied body-wise. These lovers are bound by
space. However, the poem has been amidst a lot of critical dissonance, and
there has not been a unanimously favourable commentary, it maybe safely said
that Grecian Urn is one of the most finely crafted, and philosophically sound
Odes by John Keats.
The poet uses most creative images like ‘heard’ and ‘únheard’ memories. The
visual images like ‘still unravish’d bride of quietness’, ‘foster child of silence
and slow time’ are trademarks of tell-tale tradition. From the story of the
lovers the poets moves to the world universal world of beauty and love. The
movement of the poem microcosm to the macrocosm is the beauty of the poem.
And the poem ends with a piece of advice, as also a lesson: “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty,—that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

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British Romantic
Literature III 4.7 LET US SUM UP
In this Unit we have discussed two odes of John Keats—To Nightingale and To
Autumn with a view of familiarising you with
• the development of thought in the two odes
• the comprehensive and sensuous imagery which is the hall mark of Keats’
poetry and
• features of Keat’s poetic craftsmanship particularly his negative
capability,
• varied allusions, myth making, verbal coinage, and alliteration and
assonance.

4.8 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PRORESS

1) Keats diction is marked for its vivid description and restraint of expression.
He is good at picturesque compounds throughout the poem. Some examples
are: “drowsy numbness”, “charmed magic casements”, of “perilous seas”,
in “faery lands forlorn” “Provencal song” and “sunburnt mirth”, beaded
bubbles and leaden-eyed despair.
2) This ode was inspired by the song of a nightingale that had built its nest
close to the house of a friend of Keats. The poet experiences perfect
happiness in the first song and wants to fade away unseen from the world
into the dim forest. At last, he wants to take refuge in wine, but on second
thoughts he understands that wine is not potent enough to transport him into
the ideal region. Poetry alone shall transport him. The poet describes the
romantic forest into which he has a flight of his own on the viewless wings
poetry. He compares the transitions of the individual human life with the
permanence of the song of the bird. The voice that the poet hears was heard
in ancient times by emperors and clowns. It is then broken; the poet returns
to his daily existence and is regretful that imagination cannot beguile him
for a long time.
3) A rich and vivid description of nature during the season of Autumn without
a sadness on the oncoming death as in other odes. The first stanza describes
natural objects at their richest and ripest stage such as “mellow fruitfulness”
“load and bless with fruit the vines”, “And Li all fruits with ripeness to the
core”, “to swell the gourd”, and “plump the hazel shells-, “sweet kerner, “to
set budding more” and “clammy cells”.
The second stanza adds an imaginative element to the description of Autumn
in the form of personification of the season in several appropriate settings
and postures.
The final stanza echoes post-harvest sounds, is full of concrete imagery,
and though the imagination is free to associate “wailful choir”, mourning
of gnats and swallows twitterings with transience and passing beauty, there
is no “palpable design” on the part of the poet to assert the mortality theme
on us.
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4) Keats is known as a poet painter in words. He has been able to represent Keats: ‘Ode On A
nature with the help of imagery which is sensuous and comprehensive and Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode
To A Nightingale’
pictorial as well. In the first stanza, the ripeness of fruit is suggested by
“mellow fruitfulness”, “to swell”, “plump the hazel shell”, “sweet kernel”,
“budding”, and nature’s bounty in “clammy cells”, “maturing sun”, “to
load and bless”.
In stanza II, the stillness of activity is suggested by words and images such
as “sitting careless”, “half-reap’d furrow sound asleep”, “drows’d with
the fume of poppies”, “hook spares the next swath”, “steady” and “laden
head”, “patient look”, “last oozings”. Finally in the third stanza “barred
clouds bloom the soft-dying day”, “stubble-plains with rosy hue”, wailful
choir, full grown lambs loud bleat and “gathering sallows” suggest that the
day is coming to a close.
5) Keats’s distinction lies in his ability to let sense impressions flow upon him
and the rich store of sense impressions is absorbed and transmuted into an
act of calm, meditative wisdom. The poet is himself completely absent.
There is no “I”, no suggestion of the discursive language. The power of
self absorption, identification with things, he called “negative capability”
which he saw as essential to creation of poetry.

4.8 SUGGESTED READINGS

Keats, John, et al. John Keats: a Thematic Reader. Scott, Foresman and Co.,
1971.
“Keats’s ‘Ode to a Nightingale.’” Notes and Queries, 1895, doi:10.1093/notesj/
s8-viii.205.429-a.
Rashbrook, R. F. “Keats’s Ode ‘To Autumn.’” Notes and Queries, CXCV, no.
feb18, 1950, pp. 78–79., doi:10.1093/nq/cxcv.feb18.78.

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