Page 328 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 28: John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Autumn

and this is the discovery that compels him to embrace Poesy’s “viewless wings” at last. The “art” of Notes
the nightingale is endlessly changeable and renewable; it is music without record, existing only in
a perpetual present. As befits his celebration of music, the speaker’s language, sensually rich though
it is, serves to suppress the sense of sight in favor of the other senses. He can imagine the light of the
moon, “But here there is no light”; he knows he is surrounded by flowers, but he “cannot see what
flowers” are at his feet. This suppression will find its match in “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” which is in
many ways a companion poem to “Ode to a Nightingale.” In the later poem, the speaker will finally
confront a created art-object not subject to any of the limitations of time; in “Nightingale,” he has
achieved creative expression and has placed his faith in it, but that expression—the nightingale’s
song—is spontaneous and without physical manifestation.

28.3 Ode to Autumn

28.3.1 Text

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 321