/lit/ - Literature

>>21474226
He's one of my favorite poets, and that's convenient because he's one of the most famous. It's easy to find someone to talk about him with.

>>21474250
I wish I knew more people irl who care about poetry. I’ve only been to poetry clubs in college and that was just twice as a spectator. I definitely should’ve tried to make friends.

>>21474226
I like his lyric poems (odes, sonnets) a lot but I can't get into his "epic" ones like Hyperion because I feel kind of directionless, like they lack a narrative

Post an underrated Keats poem.

On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again

O golden tongued Romance, with serene lute!
Fair plumed Syren, Queen of far-away!
Leave melodizing on this wintry day,
Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:
Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute
Betwixt damnation and impassion’d clay
Must I burn through; once more humbly assay
The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.
Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,
Begetters of our deep eternal theme!
When through the old oak Forest I am gone,
Let me not wander in a barren dream,
But when I am consumed in the fire,
Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

>>21474375
Are you out of college now? Most clubs allow alumni to attend meetings and social gatherings.

>>21475113
>they lack a narrative
That's a good thing. Narrative gets in the way of the outburst of emotion which John Stuart Mill defined as the essential characteristic of good poetry. I would say, as well, that Keats' Hyperion is an epic in the same sense that Wordsworth's "The Prelude" is an epic. It's an epic of the poet's mind in search of Jerusalem or an idealized sense of beauty.

bump

>>21474226
>I decided to celebrate my birthday today by reading some of his poetry.
Absolutely, irreproachably based.

>>21475256
No! those days are gone away
And their hours are old and gray,
And their minutes buried all
Under the down-trodden pall
Of the leaves of many years:
Many times have winter's shears,
Frozen North, and chilling East,
Sounded tempests to the feast
Of the forest's whispering fleeces,
Since men knew nor rent nor leases.

No, the bugle sounds no more,
And the twanging bow no more;
Silent is the ivory shrill
Past the heath and up the hill;
There is no mid-forest laugh,
Where lone Echo gives the half
To some wight, amaz'd to hear
Jesting, deep in forest drear.

On the fairest time of June
You may go, with sun or moon,
Or the seven stars to light you,
Or the polar ray to right you;
But you never may behold
Little John, or Robin bold;
Never one, of all the clan,
Thrumming on an empty can
Some old hunting ditty, while
He doth his green way beguile
To fair hostess Merriment,
Down beside the pasture Trent;
For he left the merry tale
Messenger for spicy ale.

Gone, the merry morris din;
Gone, the song of Gamelyn;
Gone, the tough-belted outlaw
Idling in the "grenè shawe";
All are gone away and past!
And if Robin should be cast
Sudden from his turfed grave,
And if Marian should have
Once again her forest days,
She would weep, and he would craze:
He would swear, for all his oaks,
Fall'n beneath the dockyard strokes,
Have rotted on the briny seas;
She would weep that her wild bees
Sang not to her—strange! that honey
Can't be got without hard money!

So it is: yet let us sing,
Honour to the old bow-string!
Honour to the bugle-horn!
Honour to the woods unshorn!
Honour to the Lincoln green!
Honour to the archer keen!
Honour to tight little John,
And the horse he rode upon!
Honour to bold Robin Hood,
Sleeping in the underwood!
Honour to maid Marian,
And to all the Sherwood-clan!
Though their days have hurried by
Let us two a burden try.

Keats wrote my favorite short poem of all time, "La Belle Dame sans Merci." The only time I've ever felt fear reading a poem.

>>21474226
John Clare is like Keats minus all the pretentious, auto didactic, aspiring 'intellectual' cringe, allegorising and melodrama of Keats.

The rolls and harrows lie at rest beside
The battered road; and spreading far and wide
Above the russet clods, the corn is seen
Sprouting its spiry points of tender green,
Where squats the hare, to terrors wide awake,
Like some brown clod the harrows failed to break.
Opening their golden caskets to the sun,
The buttercups make schoolboys eager run,
To see who shall be first to pluck the prize—
Up from their hurry, see, the skylark flies,
And o'er her half-formed nest, with happy wings
Winnows the air, till in the cloud she sings,
Then hangs a dust-spot in the sunny skies,
And drops, and drops, till in her nest she lies,
Which they unheeded passed—not dreaming then
That birds which flew so high would drop agen
To nests upon the ground, which anything
May come at to destroy. Had they the wing
Like such a bird, themselves would be too proud,
And build on nothing but a passing cloud!
As free from danger as the heavens are free
From pain and toil, there would they build and be,
And sail about the world to scenes unheard
Of and unseen—Oh, were they but a bird!
So think they, while they listen to its song,
And smile and fancy and so pass along;
While its low nest, moist with the dews of morn,
Lies safely, with the leveret, in the corn.

>>21475393
I really hesitate to call Hyperion an epic. I think it may attempt at being epic, but I don't think it hits those pedagogical bases hard enough to be truly epic.

>>21477221
It's an epic in a very weak sense. Wordsworth compares himself to Milton in the Prelude in a way which is alluring and not entirely literal.