Keats: Poems Published in 1820 Part 20

NOTES ON ROBIN HOOD.

PAGE 133. l. 4. _pall._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 268.

l. 9. _fleeces_, the leaves of the forest, cut from them by the wind as the wool is shorn from the sheep's back.

PAGE 134. l. 13. _ivory shrill_, the shrill sound of the ivory horn.

ll. 15-18. Keats imagines some man who has not heard the laugh hearing with bewilderment its echo in the depths of the forest.

l. 21. _seven stars_, Charles's Wain or the Big Bear.

l. 22. _polar ray_, the light of the Pole, or North, star.

l. 30. _pasture Trent_, the fields about the Trent, the river of Nottingham, which runs by Sherwood forest.

PAGE 135. l. 33. _morris._ A dance in costume which, in the Tudor period, formed a part of every village festivity. It was generally danced by five men and a boy in girl's dress, who represented Maid Marian. Later it came to be a.s.sociated with the May games, and other characters of the Robin Hood epic were introduced. It was abolished, with other village gaieties, by the Puritans, and though at the Restoration it was revived it never regained its former importance.

l. 34. _Gamelyn._ The hero of a tale (_The Tale of Gamelyn_) attributed to Chaucer, and given in some MSS. as _The Cook's Tale_ in _The Canterbury Tales_. The story of Orlando's ill-usage, prowess, and banishment, in _As You Like It_, Shakespeare derived from this source, and Keats is thinking of the merry life of the hero amongst the outlaws.

l. 36. '_grene shawe_,' green wood.

PAGE 136. l. 53. _Lincoln green._ In the Middle Ages Lincoln was very famous for dyeing green cloth, and this green cloth was the characteristic garb of the forester and outlaw.

l. 62. _burden._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 503.

NOTES ON 'TO AUTUMN'.

In a letter written to Reynolds from Winchester, in September, 1819, Keats says: 'How beautiful the season is now--How fine the air. A temperate sharpness about it. Really, without joking, chaste weather--Dian skies--I never liked stubble-fields so much as now--Aye better than the chilly green of the spring. Somehow, a stubble-field looks warm--in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it.' What he composed was the Ode _To Autumn_.

PAGE 137. ll. 1 seq. The extraordinary concentration and richness of this description reminds us of Keats's advice to Sh.e.l.ley--'Load every rift of your subject with ore.' The whole poem seems to be painted in tints of red, brown, and gold.

PAGE 138. ll. 12 seq. From the picture of an autumn day we proceed to the characteristic sights and occupations of autumn, personified in the spirit of the season.

l. 18. _swath_, the width of the sweep of the scythe.

ll. 23 seq. Now the sounds of autumn are added to complete the impression.

ll. 25-6. Compare letter quoted above.

PAGE 139. l. 28. _sallows_, trees or low shrubs of the willowy kind.

ll. 28-9. _borne . . . dies._ Notice how the cadence of the line fits the sense. It seems to rise and fall and rise and fall again.

NOTES ON ODE ON MELANCHOLY.

PAGE 140. l. 1. _Lethe._ See _Lamia_, i. 81, note.

l. 2. _Wolf's-bane_, aconite or h.e.l.lebore--a poisonous plant.

l. 4. _nightshade_, a deadly poison.

_ruby . . . Proserpine._ Cf. Swinburne's _Garden of Proserpine_.

_Proserpine._ Cf. _Lamia_, i. 63, note.

l. 5. _yew-berries._ The yew, a dark funereal-looking tree, is constantly planted in churchyards.

l. 7. _your mournful Psyche._ See Introduction to the _Ode to Psyche_, p. 236.

PAGE 141. l. 12. _weeping cloud._ l. 14. _shroud._ Giving a touch of mystery and sadness to the otherwise light and tender picture.

l. 16. _on . . . sand-wave_, the iridescence sometimes seen on the ribbed sand left by the tide.

l. 21. _She_, i.e. Melancholy--now personified as a G.o.ddess. Compare this conception of melancholy with the pa.s.sage in _Lamia_, i. 190-200.

Cf. also Milton's personifications of Melancholy in _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_.

PAGE 142. l. 30. _cloudy_, mysteriously concealed, seen of few.

INTRODUCTION TO HYPERION.

This poem deals with the overthrow of the primaeval order of G.o.ds by Jupiter, son of Saturn the old king. There are many versions of the fable in Greek mythology, and there are many sources from which it may have come to Keats. At school he is said to have known the cla.s.sical dictionary by heart, but his inspiration is more likely to have been due to his later reading of the Elizabethan poets, and their translations of cla.s.sic story. One thing is certain, that he did not confine himself to any one authority, nor did he consider it necessary to be circ.u.mscribed by authorities at all. He used, rather than followed, the Greek fable, dealing freely with it and giving it his own interpretation.

The situation when the poem opens is as follows:--Saturn, king of the G.o.ds, has been driven from Olympus down into a deep dell, by his son Jupiter, who has seized and used his father's weapon, the thunderbolt. A similar fate has overtaken nearly all his brethren, who are called by Keats t.i.tans and Giants indiscriminately, though in Greek mythology the two races are quite distinct. These t.i.tans are the children of Tellus and Coelus, the earth and sky, thus representing, as it were, the first birth of form and personality from formless nature. Before the separation of earth and sky, Chaos, a confusion of the elements of all things, had reigned supreme. One only of the t.i.tans, Hyperion the sun-G.o.d, still keeps his kingdom, and he is about to be superseded by young Apollo, the G.o.d of light and song.

In the second book we hear Ocea.n.u.s and Clymene his daughter tell how both were defeated not by battle or violence, but by the irresistible beauty of their dispossessors; and from this Ocea.n.u.s deduces 'the eternal law, that first in beauty should be first in might'. He recalls the fact that Saturn himself was not the first ruler, but received his kingdom from his parents, the earth and sky, and he prophesies that progress will continue in the overthrow of Jove by a yet brighter and better order. Enceladus is, however, furious at what he considers a cowardly acceptance of their fate, and urges his brethren to resist.

In Book I we saw Hyperion, though still a G.o.d, distressed by portents, and now in Book III we see the rise to divinity of his successor, the young Apollo. The poem breaks off short at the moment of Apollo's metamorphosis, and how Keats intended to complete it we can never know.

It is certain that he originally meant to write an epic in ten books, and the publisher's remark[245:1] at the beginning of the 1820 volume would lead us to think that he was in the same mind when he wrote the poem. This statement, however, must be altogether discounted, as Keats, in his copy of the poems, crossed it right out and wrote above, 'I had no part in this; I was ill at the time.'

Moreover, the last sentence (from 'but' to 'proceeding') he bracketed, writing below, 'This is a lie.'

This, together with other evidence external and internal, has led Dr. de Selincourt to the conclusion that Keats had modified his plan and, when he was writing the poem, intended to conclude it in four books. Of the probable contents of the one-and-half unwritten books Mr. de Selincourt writes: 'I conceive that Apollo, now conscious of his divinity, would have gone to Olympus, heard from the lips of Jove of his newly-acquired supremacy, and been called upon by the rebel three to secure the kingdom that awaited him. He would have gone forth to meet Hyperion, who, struck by the power of supreme beauty, would have found resistance impossible.

Critics have inclined to take for granted the supposition that an actual battle was contemplated by Keats, but I do not believe that such was, at least, his final intention. In the first place, he had the example of Milton, whom he was studying very closely, to warn him of its dangers; in the second, if Hyperion had been meant to fight he would hardly be represented as already, before the battle, shorn of much of his strength; thus making the victory of Apollo depend upon his enemy's unnatural weakness and not upon his own strength. One may add that a combat would have been completely alien to the whole idea of the poem as Keats conceived it, and as, in fact, it is universally interpreted from the speech of Ocea.n.u.s in the second book. The resistance of Enceladus and the Giants, themselves rebels against an order already established, would have been dealt with summarily, and the poem would have closed with a description of the new age which had been inaugurated by the triumph of the Olympians, and, in particular, of Apollo the G.o.d of light and song.'

The central idea, then, of the poem is that the new age triumphs over the old by virtue of its acknowledged superiority--that intellectual supremacy makes physical force feel its power and yield. Dignity and moral conquest lies, for the conquered, in the capacity to recognize the truth and look upon the inevitable undismayed.

Keats broke the poem off because it was too 'Miltonic', and it is easy to see what he meant. Not only does the treatment of the subject recall that of _Paradise Lost_, the council of the fallen G.o.ds bearing special resemblance to that of the fallen angels in Book II of Milton's epic, but in its style and syntax the influence of Milton is everywhere apparent. It is to be seen in the restraint and concentration of the language, which is in marked contrast to the wordiness of Keats's early work, as well as in the constant use of cla.s.sical constructions,[247:1]

Miltonic inversions[247:2] and repet.i.tions,[247:3] and in occasional reminiscences of actual lines and phrases in _Paradise Lost_.[247:4]

In _Hyperion_ we see, too, the influence of the study of Greek sculpture upon Keats's mind and art. This study had taught him that the highest beauty is not incompatible with definiteness of form and clearness of detail. To his romantic appreciation of mystery was now added an equal sense of the importance of simplicity, form, and proportion, these being, from its nature, inevitable characteristics of the art of sculpture. So we see that again and again the figures described in _Hyperion_ are like great statues--clear-cut, ma.s.sive, and motionless. Such are the pictures of Saturn and Thea in Book I, and of each of the group of t.i.tans at the opening of Book II.

Striking too is Keats's very Greek identification of the G.o.ds with the powers of Nature which they represent. It is this att.i.tude of mind which has led some people--Sh.e.l.ley and Landor among them--to declare Keats, in spite of his ignorance of the language, the most truly Greek of all English poets. Very beautiful instances of this are the sunset and sunrise in Book I, when the departure of the sun-G.o.d and his return to earth are so described that the pictures we see are of an evening and morning sky, an angry sunset, and a grey and misty dawn.

But neither Miltonic nor Greek is Keats's marvellous treatment of nature as he feels, and makes us feel, the magic of its mystery in such a picture as that of the