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On Its Way

The Life and Poetry of John Keats

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Writing from Teignmouth in Devonshire in April 1818, John Keats had this to say about his future plans:

"I propose within a month to put my knapsack at my back and make a pedestrian tour through the North of England, and part of Scotland - to make a sort of Prologue to the Life I intend to pursue - that is to write, to study and to see all Europe at the lowest expense. I will clamber through the Clouds and exist. I will get such an accumulation of stupendous recollections that as I walk through the suburbs of London I may not see them - I will stand upon Mount Blanc and remember this coming summer when I intend to straddle ben Lomond - with my Soul! - "

When he penned these lines, John Keats had no idea of the hand that fate was about to play: of how, Tom, the youngest of his brothers, (who was with him when he wrote this letter), would be dead within the year; or, of how his own health would become so undermined that he would have to abandon his walking tour of Scotland, and see his energies dissipated, as he struggled to cope with the competing forces in his life. His desire to excel in poetry on the one hand, and on the other, his love for Fanny, (Frances) Brawne; a conflict that brought him to the depth of despair as he recognised in himself, the disease, Consumption, (Tuberculosis) that had killed Tom.

This story, with its tragic ending, is well known, even where the poetry is not; and when I read, To Fanny, the penultimate poem that he wrote, I sense a purity, beauty, and naturalness in it, akin to any running stream that he might have encountered on Mount Blanc. It is as though all the competing forces in his life; had come together, in an act of generosity that would allow him to say everything that he could possibly want to say, with dignity, about the pain of loss:

                           1
Physician Nature! let my spirit blood!
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest
Throw me upon thy tripod till the flood;
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.
A theme! a theme Great Nature! give a theme;
   Let me begin my dream.
   I come - I see thee, as thou standest there,
Beckon me out into the wintry air.

                            II
Ah! dearest love, sweet home of all my fears,
   And hopes, and joys, and panting miseries,
   Tonight, if I may guess, thy beauty wears
      A smile of such delight,
      As brilliant and as bright,
   As when with ravished, aching, vassal eyes,
      Love in a soft amaze,
      I gaze, I gaze!

                               III
Who now, with greedy looks, eats up my feast?
   What stare outfaces now my silver moon!
   Ah! keep that hand unravished at the least;
      Let let, the amorous burn -
      But, prithee, do not turn
The current of your heart from me so soon.
      O save, in charity,
   The quickest pulse for me!

                               IV
Save it for me, sweet love! though music breathe
   Voluptuous visions into the warm air,
Though swimming through the dance's dangerous wreath,
      Be like an April day,
      Smiling and cold and gay,
A temperate lily, temperate as fair;
   Then, Heaven! there will be
      A warmer June for me.

                                 V
Why, this - you'll say, my Fanny! - is not true:
   Put your soft hand upon your snowy side,
Where the heart beats; confess - 'tis nothing new -
      Must not a woman be
      A feather on the sea,
Swayed to and fro by every wind and tide?
       Of an uncertain speed
      As blow-ball from the mead?

                              VI
   I know it - and to know it is despair
To one who loves you as I love, sweet Fanny!
Whose heart goes fluttering for you everywhere,
      Nor, when away you roam,
      Dare keep its wretched home.
Love, Love alone, has pains severe and many:
      Then, loveliest! keep me free
      From torturing jealousy.

                              VII
Ah! If you prize my subdued soul above
   The poor, the fading, brief, pride of an hour,
   Let none profane my Holy See of Love,
      Or with a rude hand break
      The sacramental cake;
Let none else touch the just new-budded flower;
      If not - may my eyes close,
      Love! on their last repose.

These things said, Keats's poetry can be as exasporating and difficult, as it can be simple and beautiful; for it takes us to the mythological, to places that most of us are unfamiliar with, all of which, I hope to be able to give expression to in the forthcoming blogs.