To Some Ladies, by John Keats – Romanticism in
English Poetry
By MªJosé
Jorquera Hervás
The Poem: To Some Ladies
WHAT though while the wonders of nature exploring,
I cannot your light, mazy footsteps attend;
Nor listen to accents, that almost adoring,
Bless Cynthia’s face, the enthusiast’s friend:
Yet over the steep, whence the mountain stream rushes,
With you, kindest friends, in idea I rove;
Mark the clear tumbling crystal, its passionate gushes,
Its spray that the wild flower kindly bedews.
Why linger you so, the wild labyrinth strolling?
Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?
Ah! you list to the nightingale’s tender condoling,
Responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air.
’Tis morn, and the flowers with dew are yet drooping,
I see you are treading the verge of the sea:
And now! ah, I see it - you just now are stooping
To pick up the keep-sake intended for me.
If a cherub, on pinions of silver descending,
Had brought me a gem from the fret-work of heaven;
And smiles, with his star-cheering voice sweetly blending,
The blessings of Tighe had melodiously given;
It had not created a warmer emotion
han the present, fair nymphs, I was blest with from you
Than the shell, from the bright golden sands of the ocean
Which the emerald waves at your feet gladly threw.
For, indeed, ’tis a sweet and peculiar pleasure,
(And blissful is he who such happiness finds,)
To possess but a span of the hour of leisure,
In elegant, pure, and aerial minds.
John Keats, To
Some Ladies,
Poems (1817)
Analysis of the
poem
In this paper I
will try to analyse Keats’ amazing poem “To some ladies” and discuss its topic
and main points it deals with, as well as a brief research on Keats’ literary
production.
To start with,
the poet is telling us about the relation he has with a girl. From his words it
is possible to deduce that he takes a great affection to her. We do not know if
she is either his lover, a valued friend or, even, if it is an affiliated love.
If we had to
describe with a word the condition/state in which the poet is, this would be
definitively Admiration (also Adoration). We can observe this condition/state
in each of the stanzas. This way, in the first one through the words “your
light”, “adoring”, “bless”, the poet shows a state of supreme devotion to the
woman. In the second stanza, “with you, kindest friends, in idea I rove” or in
the third one “responsive to sylphs, in the moon beamy air”, the poet expresses
that the dear one is a priority for him and that he gets lost for her, among
thoughts.
In the fourth
stanza, he expresses the exaltation of his loved thing through the verse “I see
you are treading the verge of the sea” ; in the sixth one, the feeling
materializes across the figures of the nymphs, they are undoubtedly beautiful
and fantastic beings who give one higher sense of ecstasy in the feeling to the
poem. This way, also, “I was blest with from you”, words with clear surrender
toward the woman, absolute devotion. In the last stanza, “And blissful is he
who such happiness finds”.
With all that,
the poet describes himself in a state of blessing, blessed for a higher force,
that is, Nature and the beauty that it bears - in the most benign, calmed,
beautiful, simple areas-. This sensation is transmitted through various
metaphors that he uses along the poem.
Hereby, we
observe how behind the words that represent objects or facts of Nature,
feelings of devotion from the poet towards the woman are hidden.
Another acceptance
for the meaning of the use of these elements of Nature would be, equally , the
sublime Love that the poet feels for Nature, since we see in the descriptions
that he does of this one (“the wonders of nature exploring”, the first verse of
the poem). There
might be thought, in this case, that the dear one is compared with the beauty
of Nature, across its natural, simple, beautiful movements.
Otherwise, and
inside the line of the Love that the poet takes as Nature, it might be thought
also that there is no material woman, physical body, behind this exaltation of
Nature and therefore, the poet feels deeply in love with this one, and for us
to make easier the comprehension, he uses a woman to carry it out.
Also the poet
might need to represent Nature in the figure of a woman, for his own acceptance
of the fact, of the feeling, imagining this woman who personifies the
perfection, the need to personify (capacity of giving personality to inanimate
beings), so it turns out to be easier for him to love, more real, to be able to
love this top/supreme being.
This way, we
would find this fact in the elements of Cyntia and Tighe, something that
disconcerts once one has read the whole poem, because it seems that they do not
fit. Comparing with the rest of the poem they are not the prominent element, it
seems that they are just important because Nature has granted this beauty to
them, the important thing is reflected in them (“fair nymphs”, sixth stanza).
On the other
hand, the poet expresses a small desperation or discouragement, some kind of
disability to obtain this love, difficult to find, to possess, such a frequent
feeling among the most devout poets of this feeling. They always try to express
this difficulty to them, the management of the feeling, to make it much more
intense, the desire of possessing the dear one. This way we see this in
examples as “mazy footsteps” (the first stanza), “Why linger you so, the wild
labyrinth strolling? Why breathless, unable your bliss to declare?” (third
stanza, the poet demands and waits for an immediate response in his
desperation), “And now! ah, I see it - you just now are stooping ; To pick up
the keep-sake intended for me”(fourth stanza) “to possess at least a chunk of
the hour of the leisure” (last stanza).
All that contributes
more to the need and the desire to love and to possess the dear object (or of
being corresponded). With these words he expresses, metaphorically, his deep
love and his adoration towards the dear thing.
He uses words as
“your light” (first stanza) “nightingale’s tender condoling” (second stanza)
“dew” (fourth stanza) “on pinions of silver descending”, “gem from the
fret-work of heaven” (both in the fifth stanza) “bright golden sands of the
ocean”, “emerald waves” (both in the sixth stanza) to emphasize the most
beautiful elements for him, to express his love and adoration for this beauty
of Nature.
The last two
stanzas are extremely significant, since in them he expresses already without
beating about the bush what happens to him: he has fallen in love with Nature
in its more simple expressions and exalts them and gives them a deep and pure
feeling and what’s more, he is considered to be the lucky one for being able to
observe these miracles and feel them.
To conclude this
analysis, we might say that, definitively the poet feels a deep devotion for
Nature, the one who bows before it, for its beauty, its accuracy, its fairness,
its truth. He just believes in it deeply and materializes this top Beauty in
women shapes, that are friends of him, as he says, his lovers or loved women
-and so the title-. There is something to take into account and it is the
strong symbolic meaning of the title of the poem itself. Here the poet
expresses, through the title, that just some of all ladies he knows or exist, are
blessed with Nature’s perfection, the most beautiful gifts provided by Nature
and so they two are given this beautiful perfection on themselves. So they are
blessed and so he feels blessed for being able to see them, to have them close.
And this is how he expresses the elite and exquisiteness of those women.
Therefore he gives absolute priority to Nature and its marvels (“It had not
created a warmer emotion”, sixth stanza), Nature is the one responsible of his
adoration. He is considered to be a lover of the marvels of Nature and bewitched by the same ones.
After analysing
of the poem, we should regard to something important to understand the poem
better. This is the context or background. To settle our poet, we might say
that Keats belonged to the Romantic period that was developed in Europe in the
first half of nineteenth century as a result of rationalism’s oppression of an
eighteenth century
As his
contemporaries, Keats defended in a passionate way the idea of Nature, as we
have seen here in To Some Ladies, and
the view and descriptions of landscapes to escape from the devastating world
they were living. But “from all the romantic poets, Keats was the most exigent
and delicate. Extremely idealist, the love for beauty was a passion for him,
and his endless rising to get in union with absolute beauty meant his own life.
Keats was a mystic of poetry, and he could find it in Nature (he loved it
directly), in the medieval romance and in the legendary ancient Greek. Keats’
literary production from 1820 contains amazing compositions” (Pujals, 334)
His literary
production includes poems, sonnets and his brilliant odes, such as the subliminal
To a Nightingale or To Autumn. (Case, 41 )
“He always had a
great sense for expression (being even compared with Shakespeare’s
expressiveness). Like Shakespeare, he was intensely aware of sounds, colours,
smells and textures (as we can observe in our poem), and he found meaning in
the richness and beauty of life. His vision of beauty owed nothing to theories:
it was immediate, palpable. Love and death were matters so intense and so real
to Keats that they overshadowed all else.” (Case, 40)
“For him, the
essential problem was to transcend melancholy. Keats believed that the
knowledge which comes from imaginative experience has more meaning for the
individual than that derived by argument: that is, in fact, such knowledge
which constitutes reality. His entire work is a magnificent substantiation of
this belief. In one of his Letters,
he declares that “axioms in philosophy are not axioms until they are proved
upon our pulses: we read fine things but never feel them to the full until we
have gone the same steps as the author”: and in another letter, refers to the
world as “the vale of Soul-making” (Case, 40)
“The vision of
beauty which haunted Keats required the discipline of form. He was himself
aware that the language of his early work had shown a tendency to luxuriate” (Case,
40-41)
“The main
characteristic of Keats and his literary production is his earliness. No sooner
he had left behind his first works, he had started his most important ones. In
1817 was published his first short poems volume (where we can find the poem
discussed here). Keats wants to show Nature with its own beauty, and he yearns
for showing a poetic interpretation of man and life. His production, as a
whole, is very select, exclusive” (Pujals, 335)
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
http://www.john-keats.com/gedichte/to_some_ladies.htm (14/11/06)
Historia
de
A Short History
of English Literature.
Kenneth Case. Max Hueber Verlag München. 1961. (14/11/06)