John Keats as Romantic Poet

अनुक्रम (Contents)

Discuss Keats as a Romantic Poet.

Keats as a Romantic Poet – A writer or a poet is influenced by the age to which he belongs. Keats belonged to the Romantic age and naturally the qualities of all other romantic poets ae to be found in his works. The chief characteristics of romantic poetry are love of beauty, love of nature, love of the past, supernaturalism, glow of emotion and the use of imagination. Peter describes the romantic quality in nature as “the addition of strangeness to beauty”. Beauty is to be found in all poetry but romantic poetry imparts strangeness of beauty. Wordsworth, the leader of romantic poetry, finds the presence of the message of eternity even in the simplest flower, thus he reveals something strange and wonderful. The narration of strangeness supplied the romantic quality to the poem of Wordsworth. Similarly Keats finds beauty in ordinary things of nature. He finds beauty in ordinary things like flowers, streams and clouds. He loved Universal Beauty which is one and infinite.

He is inspired and captured by the song of the nightingale. While bird yet for Keats it has become a symbol of unlimited joy and infinite absorbed in haring the song of the nightingale Keats is removed from this world of reality to the world of eternity. The Nightingale, though a simple happiness.

One peculiarity of Keats is that in his poem we find a blending of the classical and the romantic. For example in “Endymion’ and ‘Lamia’ he has made use of the classical sotries but for representation his use of rich and picturesque style is romantic in character. Whereas his pure romantic poems are ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’, ‘Isabella’ and ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ where we find both the subject matter and the style are romantic. The stories of these poems belong to the middle ages which is considered as the store house of romance. The combination of the romantic freshness and spontaneity with classical restraint is to be found in the Odes of Keats which are considered to be his most mature poetry.

Keats loved nature not to get any sympathy or moral lesson from her
but only for the sake of his true love for nature. Nature has been invoked by Keats as ‘maker of poets’ in the following lines-

“O maker of the modern poets, delight
of this fair world, and all the gently livers,
Spangler of clouds, and halo of crystal rivers,
Mingler with leaves, and dew and mumbling streams.”

In his poem, “I stood tip-toe upon a little hill Keats says-

“The sweet birds which with a modest pride
Fall droopingly, in slanting curve aside
Their scantily leaved, and finely tapering stems,
Here are sweet peas, on tip toe for a flight
With wings of gentle flush liver delicate white
And taper fingers catching at all things
To blind them all with tiny rings.
Where swarms of minnows show their little heads
Staping their wavy bodies against the stream.’

Keats had a great love for the past. He loved the middle ages and also he drew inspiration from the Greek mythology.

His poems ‘Endymion’ and “Hyperion’ are based on the stories of Greek mythology. His poems show his love for unseen and the past. Like all other romantic poets he also found joy and inspiration in the past, in the Middle Ages and in the days of ancient Greece. He made himself free from the sordid realities of his age. He tried to get inspiration from the medieval world and from the Greek mythology. He narrates the story of a romantic love with all its charm and brightness of the medieval world with its knighthood and chivalry in his poem. ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’. His love of Greek mythology is found in his poems ‘Endymion’ and ‘Hyperion’.

Supernaturalism is one of the most striking notes of romantic poetry. Keats has made use of supernaturalism in his poem ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci”. In this poem he describes how a knight fell in the charm of a fairy who took him to her cave and gave him sweet drinks and delicious food.

The style and Keat’s writing is romantic in character. In his poetry we find the quality of suggestiveness. Various kinds of metres and stanza form have been used by him in his poem. He did not deal with the unrealities of life. He loved both truth and beauty. The combination of the world of imagination and that of reality is present in his poems. He has been rightly called a Romantic poet.

La Belle Dame sans Merci Poem Summary

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