Context and a close look at Bright Star and The Eve of St. Agnes

1. John Keats
LO: To sophisticatedly
analyse how Keats uses
form, structure and
language to present his
ideas on love.
Keats is my favourite
poet: what do you
already know about
him?

2. Bright Star
Sort the poem into the correct order...
What kind of love is being presented here?
What tone is used to describe the poem?
Why has Keats chosen to use the form? What does
this form hold connotations of?
How does the structure of the poem reflect his
meaning?
What kind of imagery is used and what does it
suggest about the love he feels?

3. • Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

4. John Keats Life
 1795 – 1821 (he dies at 26)
 His father died when he was 8, he was forced to be a teen apprentice to a
doctor to support his family.
 His mother died when he was 14 of TB. His older brother would die from
TB and Keats would nurse him. Keats would then die of TB when he was
26.
 He trained to be a doctor (less impressive than it sounds today!) but gave
it up to follow his dream of being a poet.
 He had no money, so had to rely on friends and acquaintances to support
him.
 He moved in with a friend in Wentworth Place whose next door neighbour
was Fanny Brawne – a young woman. Keats fell desparately in love with
her but didn’t have enough money to marry her and soon became ill.
 He wrote most of his poems in 1819 – his annus mirabilis – at Wentworth
Place.
 When he was diagnosed with TB, his friends rallied enough money to send
him to Italy (warmer temperatures were thought to help) where he died
with one friend and penniless.
 The Spanish Steps are named after him in Rome.

5. Critical Reception
He was hated during his lifetime by the
establishment (including Wordsworth) since he
was called the “cockney poet” because he was
from London and ‘common.’
They said his poems were full of “petty
disgust”, that he should “go back to the
shop”, that his writings were “unfit for ladies” and
“impertuble drivelling idiocy.”
Since his death, he is now venerated as one of
the most important and popular poets of the
Romantic School.

6. Keats and Fanny
• I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks;" he wrote to
her, "...your loveliness, and the hour of my death".[48]
• In one of his many hundreds of notes and letters, Keats
wrote to Brawne on 13 October 1819, declaring, "My love
has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am
forgetful of every thing but seeing you again – my Life
seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb'd
me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I
was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without
the hope of soon seeing you ... I have been astonished that
Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder'd at it –
I shudder no more – I could be martyr'd for my Religion –
Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for
you."

7. This Grave / contains all
that was Mortal / of
a / Young English
Poet / Who / on his
Death Bed, in the
Bitterness of his
Heart / at the
Malicious Power of
his Enemies / Desired
/ these Words to be /
engraven on his
Tomb Stone: / Here
lies One / Whose
Name was writ in
Water. 24 February
1821"
As Byron quipped in his narrative poem
Don Juan;
'Tis strange the mind, that very fiery
particle
Should let itself be snuffed out by an
article.
(canto 2, stanza 60)

8. Obsessed with beauty
"I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
Heart's affections and the truth of the
imagination. What imagination seizes as
Beauty must be truth".
Final Lines of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' – that is all
You know on earth, and all ye need to know".

9. The Chameleon Poet
• The poetical mind, Keats argues;
• has no self – it is every thing and nothing – It has no character – it enjoys light and
shade;... What shocks the virtuous philosopher, delights the camelion [chameleon]
Poet. It does no harm from its relish of the dark side of things any more than from
its taste for the bright one; because they both end in speculation. A Poet is the
most unpoetical of any thing in existence; because he has no Identity – he is
continually in for – and filling some other Body – The Sun, the Moon, the Sea and
Men and Women who are creatures of impulse are poetical and have about them
an unchangeable attribute – the poet has none; no identity – he is certainly the
most unpoetical of all God's Creatures.
• He outlines Negative capability as the poetic state in which we are "capable of
being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts without any irritable reaching after fact &
reason ...[Being] content with half knowledge" where one trusts in the heart's
perceptions.[85] He writes later "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the
Heart's affections and the truth of Imagination – What the imagination seizes as
Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not – for I have the same Idea
of all our Passions as of Love they are all in their sublime, creative of essential
Beauty"[86] again and again turning to the question of what it means to be a
poet.[31] "My Imagination is a Monastery and I am its Monk", Keats notes to
Shelley.

10. And still she slept an ______________ sleep,
In ______________ linen, smooth, and ___________
While he from forth the closet brought a heap Fill in the Blanks from
Of _____________ apple, quince, and plum, and gourd;
With jellies soother than the creamy curd, The Eve of St. Agnes
And ____________ syrops, _____________ with cinnamon;
Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d
From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one,
Lustrous
From _____________ Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon. Chilly
Bright
XXXI.
Lavender’d
These delicates he heap’d with ______________ hand (smells like
On _____________dishes and in baskets __________
Of wreathed silver: sumptuous they stand
lavender)
In the retired quiet of the night, Candied
Filling the ___________room with ______________ light.— (sweetened)
“And now, my love, my seraph fair, awake!
“Thou art my heaven, and I thine eremite: Lucent (to
“Open thine eyes, for meek St. Agnes’ sake, shine/ glow)
“Or I shall drowse beside thee, so my soul doth ache.”
Tinct (tinted)
XXXII. Azure-lidded
(azure is bright
Thus whispering, his ___________ unnerved arm
Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
blue)
By the______________ curtains:—’twas a midnight charm Blanched
Impossible to melt as iced stream:
(bleached)
The _______________salvers in the moonlight gleam;
Broad _____________ fringe upon the carpet lies: Glowing
It seem’d he never, never could redeem Silken
From such a stedfast spell his lady’s eyes;
So mus’d awhile, entoil’d in woofed phantasies.
Perfume

11. Synaethesia
A union of the senses:
A real condition where people hear
colours, smell light etc.
Keats uses it to create sumptuous and sensuous
poetry to create the idea of the imagination.