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قراءة كتاب A Day with Keats
تنويه: تعرض هنا نبذة من اول ١٠ صفحات فقط من الكتاب الالكتروني، لقراءة الكتاب كاملا اضغط على الزر “اشتر الآن"
Breakfast over, the business of the day begins: and that, with Keats, is poetry, and all that can foster poetic stimulus. He takes no real heed of anything else. A devoted son and brother, one ready to sacrifice himself and his slender resources to the uttermost farthing for his mother, brothers, sister and friends—yet he has no vital interest in other folks' affairs, nor in current events, nor in ordinary social topics. Other people's poetry does not appeal to him, except that of Shakespeare, and of Homer—whom he does not know in the original, but who, through the poor medium of translation, has filled his soul with Grecian fantasies.
| Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold, |
| And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; |
| Round many western islands have I been |
| Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold. |
| Oft of one wide expanse had I been told |
| That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne: |
| Yet did I never breathe its pure serene |
| Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold: |
| Then felt I like some watcher of the skies |
| When a new planet swims into his ken; |
| Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes |
| He stared at the Pacific—and all his men |
| Look'd at each other with a wild surmise— |
| Silent upon a peak in Darien. |
| Sonnet. |
This is what he wrote after sitting up one night till daybreak with his friend Cowden Clarke, shouting with delight over the vistas newly revealed to him. And from that time on, he has luxuriated in dreams of classic beauty, warmed to new life by the sorcery of Romance. Immortal shapes arise upon him from the "infinite azure of the past:" and he sees how
| Deep in the shady sadness of a vale |
| Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn, |
| Far from the fiery noon, and eve's one star, |
| Sat gray-hair'd Saturn, quiet as a stone, |
| Still as the silence round about his lair; |
| Forest on forest hung about his head |
| Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there, |
| Not so much life as on a summer's day |
| Robs not one light seed from the feather'd grass, |
| But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest. |
| A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more |
| By reason of his fallen divinity |
| Spreading a shade: the Naiad 'mid her reeds |
| Press'd her cold finger closer to her lips. |
| Hyperion. |
He is studying French, Latin, and especially Italian—all with a view of furthering his poetic ability: though no great reader, he has soaked himself in the atmosphere of old Italian tales, and the very spirit of mediæval Florence breathes from the story, borrowed from Boccaccio, "an echo in the north-wind sung," which narrates how the hapless Isabelle hid away the head of her murdered lover.
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| Painting by W. J. Neatby. ISABELLA. Click to ENLARGE |
| And she forgot the stars, the moon, the sun, |
| And she forgot the blue above the trees, |
| And she forgot the dells where waters run, |
| And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; |
| She had no knowledge when the day was done, |
| And the new moon she saw not: but in peace |
| Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, |
| And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. |
| Then in a silken scarf,—sweet with the dews |
| Of precious flowers pluck'd in Araby, |
| And divine liquids come with odorous ooze |
| Through the cold serpent-pipe refreshfully,— |
| She wrapp'd it up; and for its tomb did choose |
| A garden pot, wherein she laid it by, |
| And covered it with mould, and o'er it set |
| Sweet Basil, which her tears kept ever wet. |
| And she forgot the stars, the moon, and sun, |
| And she forgot the blue above the trees, |
| And she forgot the dells where waters run, |
| And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; |
| She had no knowledge when the day was done, |
| And the new moon she saw not: but in peace |
| Hung over her sweet Basil evermore, |
| And moisten'd it with tears unto the core. |
| Isabella. |
Keats has brought himself with difficulty, however, to the perusal of modern poets. His boyish enthusiasm for Leigh Hunt's work has long since evaporated: and after reading Shelley's Revolt of Islam, all he has found to say is, "Poor Shelley, I think he has his quota of good qualities!" But, for the rest, he is not attracted to any kind of knowledge which cannot be "made applicable and subservient to the purposes of poetry,"—his own poetry. For his one desire is to win an immortal name—and he has begun life "full of hopes, fiery, impetuous, and ungovernable, expecting the world to fall at once beneath his pen. Poor fellow!" (Haydon's diary).
But "men of genius," Keats himself has said, "are as great as certain ethereal chemicals, operating in a mass of created matter: but they have not any determined character." That indefiniteness of literary aim—that want of willpower, without