Monday, October 31, 2005

A great, great poet ...

Little time -- and energy -- to blog tonight (I have a review to work on), but the day cannot end without acknowledging that on this date in 1795 John Keats was born. As much as any poet Keats got me interested in poetry. Few have ever been more adept at turning language into music ("Yet would I on this very midnight cease,/And the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds..."). Here is a nice site dedicated to him. And here is one of my favorites among his poems:

To Sleep

O SOFT embalmer of the still midnight!
Shutting with careful fingers and benign
Our gloom-pleased eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine;
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,
In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes,
Or wait the amen, ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities;
Then save me, or the passèd day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;
Save me from curious conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oilèd wards,
And seal the hushèd casket of my soul.

1 comment:

  1. Anonymous2:59 PM

    Re. Reputations: How They Grow and Grow.


    Few poets in the English language (harrumph!) have written so little of interest poetically as Coleridge, and his near contemporary, Keats.

    It remains a mystery of supernal phenomena this.

    Without the latter's lumberman's handful of odes, what is there? A few tinkly sonnets full of historical bloopers? Gosh.

    Hype forever! Long live ignorance!


    Give me a break,

    Geoff

    ReplyDelete