John Keats – Page 3 – Interesting Literature

‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’: A Poem by John Keats

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’: this, the words on John Keats’s Grecian urn proclaim, is all we know, and all we need to know. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of the most celebrated poetic achievements of the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821), so is perfect for our next stop on this poetry odyssey, Post A Poem A Day, which sees us sharing some of our favourite classic poems. And ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is classic in more than one sense.

‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ by John Keats

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

A Summary and Analysis of John Keats’s ‘To Autumn’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness’: John Keats wrote many a memorable and arresting opening line in his short life, but his opening to his great poem ‘To Autumn’, one of his finest odes, is perhaps his most resonant of all.

A Short Analysis of John Keats’s ‘Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘Bright Star’, or ‘Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art’ as it is sometimes known, is probably the most famous sonnet written by the Romantic poet John Keats (1795-1821). He wrote it in 1819 originally, although he revised it a year later. When he wrote ‘Bright Star’, Keats knew that he was dying from consumption or tuberculosis, and the poem is in part about this awareness that he will die young.

A Short Analysis of John Keats’s ‘You Say You Love’

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

‘O love me truly!’ as a poetic refrain is likely to inspire disgust at the poet’s desperation rather than sympathy, but then desperation can be dangerously close to despair, and John Keats (1795-1821) knew better than most what it felt like to experience the pain of hopeless love. In his short and little-known poem ‘You Say You Love’, Keats addresses a woman who doesn’t return his love.

You say you love; but with a voice
Chaster than a nun’s, who singeth
The soft Vespers to herself
While the chime-bell ringeth –
O love me truly!

II.

You say you love; but with a smile
Cold as sunrise in September,

10 of the Best John Keats Poems Everyone Should Read

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

John Keats (1795-1821) died when he was just twenty-five years old, but he left behind a substantial body of work, considering he died so young. Nevertheless, a number of his poems immediately suggest themselves as being among the ‘best’ of his work. In this post, we’ve selected what we think are the top ten best Keats poems.