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Keats
As A Poet Nature
OR
Keats’
Treatment Of Nature
Keats's sentiment of Nature is
simpler than that of the obvious other romantics. He remains totally unaffected
by the Pantheism of Wordsworth and Shelley and loves Nature not owing to any non-secular
significance in her or any divine which means in her however primarily thanks
to her external charm and sweetness. The instinct of William Wordsworth was to
interpret all the operations of Nature by those of his own soul. For Shelley,
natural beauty was symbolical in a very two-fold sense. In the visible glories
of the globe, his philosophy saw the veil of the unseen and all the
representational process of Nature’s additional remote and skyey phenomena was
indivisible in his soul from visions of a refulgent future. In Keats, the
sentiment of Nature was easier, additional direct, and more disinterested than
in either of these two poets. It was his instinct to interpret Nature more for
her own sake, and less her with its own workings and aspirations. He was gifted
with a delighted insight into all woods and fields. Keats is that the author of
the senses and he loves Nature as a result of her esthetic attractiveness, her
appeal to the sense of sight, the sense of hearing, the sense of smell, the
sense of touch. He loves flowers as a result of their fantastic thing about
colour, perfumed smell, and softness. He loves the streams because of their
music. He loves the snow, the moon and rainbow for their visual loveliness. He
has no mystic intercourse with Nature and reads no ethical significance in her
(except most likely once he personifies the moon as Greek deity in his Endymion
and considers her influences as beneficent).
There is ample evidence of love for
Nature for Nature's own sake in Keats's first volume of poems. In I Stood
Tiptoe, we have several Nature-pictures showing Keats's delight in the beauties
of Nature. We have, for instance, the following lines:
The
clouds were pure and white as flocks new-shorn,
And
fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept
On
the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept
A
little noiseless noise among the leaves
Bom
of the very sigh that silence heaves:
This stunning image of the white
clouds sleeping on the blue fields of heaven is followed by alternative photos
of Nature:
A
bush of May- flowers with the bees about them:
Ah,
sure no tasteful nook would be without them;
And
let the lush laburnum oversweep them,
And
let long grass grow around the roots to keep them
Moist,
cool and green; and shade then violets,
That
they may bind the moss in leafy nets.
This picture of the May-flowers,
the long grass violets, etc.; has an obvious sensuous appeal. The two photos of
Nature has given higher than illustrate another purpose with respect to Keats's
treatment of Nature. He dwells chiefly upon the tactic aspects of Nature like
the flowers, the trees, the grass, the hills, the moonlight, the fields, etc.
In this respect, again, he has also distinguished from Shelley United Nations the agency is a lot of fascinated by the dynamic aspects of Nature just like the
wind and therefore the cloud, and the shifting phenomena of Nature just like
the ocean and also the sunset. This is how Sleep and Poetry opens:
What
is gentler than a wind in summer?
What
is more soothing than the pretty hummer
That
stays one moment in an open flower,
And
buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?
What
is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing?
In
a green island, far from all men's knowing?
More
healthful than the leafiness of dales?
More
secret than a nest of nightingales?
Here we have a series of Nature
pictures____ the bee flying from flower to flower, the musk-rose blowing in the green island, the leafiness dales, a nest of nightingales.
Keats's observation of Nature is
extremely keen and zip escapes it. In most of his poems, we've got
Nature-description for its own sake, “expressive of nothing however a keen
delight and real joy in Nature”. His Nature-pictures are detailed and elaborate.
It is for this reason that he generally regarded as a precursor of the
Tennysonian School of Nature. In Endymion, the account of the feast of Pan
contains passages which the quality of direct nature-interpretation scarcely to
be surpassed poetry:
Gave
temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
The
lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
To
warn their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
Man's voice was in the mountains and the mass
Of
Nature's lives and wonders puls'd ten-fold,
To
feel this sun-rise and its glories old.
In Fancy, the poet shows his keen
observation when he gives us an inventory of natural phenomena by mentioning
the field-mouse peeping from its cell, the snake casting away its winter-skin,
the freckled eggs being hatched in the hawthorn tree, being hatched in the Hawthorn
tree, the hen birds wing resting on her mossy nest, etc._____
Thou
shalt see the field -mouse peep
Meagre
from its called sleep,
And
the snake all winter-thin
Cast
on sunny bank its skin,
Freckled
nest-eggs thou shalt see
Hatching
in the hawthorn tree,
When
the hen-birds wing doth rest
Quiet
on her mossy nest;
Then
the hurry and alarm
When
the bee-hive casts its swami;
In the Ode to a Nightingale, we
have a couple of remarkable Nature-pictures showing Keats's delight in the purely sensuous appeal of Nature. One is the picture of the moon shining in the
sky while there is darkness on the grassy floor of the forest:
And
haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster'd
around by her starry Fays; etc. etc.
The other may be an image of
flowers___hawthorn, eglantine, violets, musk roses:
White
hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
Fast
fading violets covered 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.
In the lyric To Psyche, we again
have a couple of exquisite pictures of Nature. Cupid and Psyche area unit saw
lying facet by side:
In
deepest grass, beneath the whispering roof
Of
leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A
brooklet scarce espied:
Mid-hushed,
cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed
Blue,
silver white, and budded Tyrian
They
lay calm-breathing on the bedded grass:
This is, indeed, one of the best
Nature-pictures in Keats's poetry. We have the deep grass below and the leaves
and blossoms upon the branches of trees; there is a booklet close by and, above
all, there are the hushed, cool-rooted, fragrant-eyed flowers of various
colours. It is the most inviting picture.
In the lyric On Melancholy, we have
a beautiful picture of rain falling from a cloud above on the drooping flowers
below:
But
when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden
from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That
fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
And
hides the green hill in an April shroud
Then, of course, we have got the
lyric to a time of year during which we've stunning photos of autumn's fruits
and autumn's songs. The ripe apples, the swollen gourd, the sweet kernel in the
hazels, the boney in bee-hives have all a rich sensuous appeal, the songs of
autumn is the sounds of gnats, the bleating of lambs, the singing of crickets, the whistling of the redbreast and swallows. The whole of this poem illustrates
Keats's extraordinary powers of the observation in the world of Nature. The brief picture of the sunset over the fields in this poem not worthy:
While
barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day
And
touch the stubble-plains with a rosy hush:
Keats's perspective to Nature has
been compared thereupon of the traditional Greeks. The ancient Greeks
personified the objects and for Nature. They the moon Cynthia, and the sun Apollo;
they saw Dryads in the wood and Naiads in water. Keats, too, typically followed
the Greeks during this respect. In one of his poems he says:
I
shall again sea Phoebus in the morning:
Or
flushed Aurora in the rosiest dawning!
Or
a white Naiad in a rippling stream.
Aurorean Greek mythology is the
goddess of dawn; Phoebus the god of the sun and a Naiad is a water-spirit. In
other words, Keats possessed myth-making faculty in regard to Nature. This is,
of course, best seen in Endymion and in Titan. Shelley, too, it may be observed
personified the objects of Nature -he personified the west wind, the cloud, the
Mediterranean etc. But while, in Shelley's case, the objects Nature retain
their character as objects of Nature and not given any human character, Keats
gives to his personifications of the objects and forces of Nature a clearly
human character, thus following the Greeks. The moon is for him Cynthia who
falls in love with a mortal and has the same amorous desire as an earthly
woman.
Occasionally Keats's treatment of
Nature shows a posh sentiment, as in the following lines from Hyperion:
As
when upon a tranced summer night,
Those
green-robed senators of mighty woods,
Tall
oaks, branch-charmed by the earnest stars
Dream,
and so dream all night, without a stir.
Here author employs several
metaphors and epithets to express every impact that a forest scene by
star-light can have upon the mind.
Keats was one in all the supreme
poets of Nature. To William, Wordsworth Nature may be living with the power to
influence man permanently or unwell. Keats neither gives a moral life to
Nature, as Wordsworth did, not attempts to pass beyond her familiar
manifestations, as Shelley did. (Shelley is that the “of sky and ocean and
cloud, the gold of dawn and the gloom of earthquake and eclipse. The world of
Nature that he paints is rarely a world that we know.) But in Keats' Nature
poetry, realism or the quest for pure truth informs every detail. He is the
predecessor of the Tennysonian school because all his Nature poetry is based on
exact knowledge, and the knowledge of a man deliberately observing and storing
up the minutest details of what he sees.
Sidney Colvin observes: Keats's
character as a poet of Nature begins distinctly to declare itself in his first
volume, the Poems of 1817 He differs by it alike from Wordsworth and Shelley.
The instinct of Wordsworth was to interpret all the operations of Nature by
those of his m strenuous soul. For Shelley natural beauty was symbolical in a
very twofold sense. In the visible glories of the world, his philosophy shows
the evil of the unseen; and all the imagery of Nature's more remote and skyey
phenomena were inseparable in his soul from visions of a radiant future. In poet
the sentiment of Nature was easier than in either of those 2 men; a lot of
direct, and more disinterested. It was his instinct, to love and interpret
Nature more for her own sake, and less for the sake of sympathy which the human the mind can read into her with its own workings and aspirations. He was gifted
with a delighted insight into all the beauties of the woods and volume, with
their lingering trains of peaceful summer imagery, and loving inventories of
"Nature's gentle doings" and pleasant touches of a constant kind unit
scattered to boot among the sonnets as throughout this To Charles Wells:
As
late I rambled in the happy fields,
What
time the skylark shakes the tremulous dew
Form
his lush clover covert, _
Or again in that
To Solitude:
Let
me thy vigils keep
‘Mongst
boughs pavilioned where the deer's swift leap
Startles
the wild bee from the foxglove bell,