19 December, 2016

MONDAY POEM: ODE TO PSYCHE by John Keats


Happy Monday dear readers, today we are meeting to discuss yet another beautiful poem by one of the most talented poets of all time:

Today we are reading

ODE TO PSYCHE by JOHN KEATS




Let's get to know John Keats:
John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English romantic poet. As a child he lost his two parents, constantly relocated and eventually ended up in Rome. Keats dead at a very young age of only 25 from tuberculosis. Keats was exceptionally sensitive and had a unique way of seeing things. A really heartbreaking fact is that during his short life his poems were not accepted by critics and no one believed Keats to be a poet. In a letter to his friend and love Fanny Brawn he wrote that he will die without leaving a mark in the world. Little did he know that now he is one of the most studied and quoted poets of all time.



 Ode to Psyche

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
         By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
         Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
         The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
         And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched 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;
         Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;
         Their lips touch'd not, but had not bade adieu,
As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,
And ready still past kisses to outnumber
         At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:
                The winged boy I knew;
But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?
                His Psyche true!

O latest born and loveliest vision far
         Of all Olympus' faded hierarchy!
Fairer than Phoebe's sapphire-region'd star,
         Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;
Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,
                Nor altar heap'd with flowers;
Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan
                Upon the midnight hours;
No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
         From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
         Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,
         Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,
When holy were the haunted forest boughs,
         Holy the air, the water, and the fire;
Yet even in these days so far retir'd
         From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,
         Fluttering among the faint Olympians,
I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir'd.
So let me be thy choir, and make a moan
                Upon the midnight hours;
Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet
         From swinged censer teeming;
Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat
         Of pale-mouth'd prophet dreaming.

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane
         In some untrodden region of my mind,
Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,
         Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:
Far, far around shall those dark-cluster'd trees
         Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;
And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,
         The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull'd to sleep;
And in the midst of this wide quietness
A rosy sanctuary will I dress
   With the wreath'd trellis of a working brain,
         With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign,
         Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:
And there shall be for thee all soft delight
         That shadowy thought can win,
A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,
         To let the warm Love in! 
 


I am simply in love with this man and poet and no one can make my heart and soul cry and sour like him. Such wonderfully sad and harry, loving words put in one poem!


What did you think of ODE TO PSYCHE?