KEATS AS A POET OF NATURE

Keats was a great poet of English literature. He was an ardent lover of beauties of this world. Everything in nature was full of wonder and mystery for him. The objects of nature include the rising sun, moving clouds, glowing buds and swimming fishes etc.

Keats is generally known as the pot of senses and sensuousness is the key to his attitude towards nature. He loves flowers because of their beauty of colour, fragrant smell and softness. He loves streams because of their music. He loves the snow, the moon and rainbow for their visual loveliness. He sees no mystic intercourse with nature as Wordsworth does.

There is ample evidence of his love for nature for nature’s own sake in Keats’ first volume of poems. In ‘I Stood Tip-toe Upon a Little Hill’, we have several pictures of nature. We see the following lines;

“The clouds were pure and white as flocks new shorn,

And fresh from the clear brook; sweetly they slept,

On the blue fields of heaven, and then there crept,

A little noiseless noise among the leaves,

Born of the very sigh that silence heaves.”

This beautiful picture of white clouds sleeping on the blue fields of heaven is followed by other pictures of nature;

“A bush of May flowers with the bees about them;

Ah, sure no tasteful nook would be without them;

And let a lush laburnum over-sweep them,

And let long grass grow round the roots to keep them

Moist, cool and green; and shade the violets,

That they may bind the moss in leafy nets.”

Every object of nature brings delight to the poet and he paints a beautiful picture out of it. Nature is a store house of delight for him. Keats dwells upon the static aspects of nature like the flowers, trees, moonlight and the hills. In this way, he may be distinguished from Shelley who was more interested in the dynamic aspects of nature like the west wind, the clouds and some shifting phenomenon of nature like the ocean and the setting sun. This is how his ‘Sleep and Poetry’ opens;

“What is more gentle than a wind in summer?

What is more soothing than the pretty hummer

That stays one moment in an open flower,

And buzzes cheerily from bower to bower?

What is more tranquil than a musk-rose blowing?

In a green island, far from all men’s knowing?

More healthful than the leafiness of dales?

More secret than a nest of nightingales?”

In ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, we have a couple of remarkable nature pictures. One is the picture of moon shining in the sky while there is darkness on the grassy floor of the forest;

“And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,

Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays.”

In ‘Ode to Psyche’, we again have a couple of exquisite pictures of nature where Cupid and Psyche are seen lying side by side.

“In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof,

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran,

A brooklet, scarce espied:

Mid hush'd, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass.”

In ‘Ode on Melancholy’, we have a beautiful picture of rain falling from a cloud on the drooping flowers;

“But when the melancholy fit shall fall,

Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,

That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,

And hides the green hill in an April shroud.”

In ‘Ode to Autumn’, he enters the very soul of autumn season and exclaims with joy;

“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.”

To cut the matter short, we may say that John Keats was a lover of beauty. He is generally and frequently regarded as a poet of nature. It is said that Keats visualized nature, Shelley intellectualized nature and Wordsworth spiritualized nature.