LOVE IS MY RELIGION

I was going to write a few lines on S. T. Coleridge, but I realised that today is a very important anniversary I can’t ignore. Exactly 198 years ago today John Keats, the poet of love, passed away in the city I presently live in, Rome.

John Keats (1798 – 1821) is perhaps the poet who best exemplifies devotion to love. A couple of paragraphs on this blog could never capture this boundless devotion. I could write volumes on the love that transpires from his poetry and letters. Succinctly, I shall just use the words of the poet himself.

Let me start with Endymion. This is a long poem about the moon goddess Cynthia’s love for Endymion, a shepherd of Latmos. Endymion’s love for Cynthia foreshadows Keats’ own quest for ideal beauty. The poem is a love-bound labyrinth of symbolism and allegory. Keats says that it is “a feverish attempt, rather than a deed accomplished.” However, the poem is gifted with outstanding passages, sentences and phrases. The very first line is a case in point: “A thing of beauty is a joy for ever”.

Endymion look’d at her, and press’d her hand, 

And said, “Art thou so pale, who wast so bland 

And merry in our meadows? How is this? 

Tell me thine ailment: tell me all amiss!— 

Ah! thou hast been unhappy at the change            

Wrought suddenly in me. What indeed more strange? 

Or more complete to overwhelm surmise? 

Ambition is no sluggard: ‘tis no prize,  

That toiling years would put within my grasp, 

That I have sigh’d for: with so deadly gasp            

No man e’er panted for a mortal love. 

So all have set my heavier grief above 

These things which happen. Rightly have they done: 

I, who still saw the horizontal sun 

Heave his broad shoulder o’er the edge of the world,            

Out-facing Lucifer, and then had hurl’d 

My spear aloft, as signal for the chace— 

I, who, for very sport of heart, would race 

With my own steed from Araby; pluck down 

A vulture from his towery perching; frown            

A lion into growling, loth retire— 

To lose, at once, all my toil breeding fire, 

And sink thus low! but I will ease my breast 

Of secret grief, here in this bowery nest. 

You can read the poem here. 

Another favourite of mine is, Isabella And The Pot of Basil, a poem about the unrequited love between the rich Isabella and Lorenzo, a young man employed by her family in Florence. Her wicked brothers who are snobs and social climbers, do not bless this love, and warn their sister not to nurture the relationship. But their love is too overwhelming:

With every morn their love grew tenderer,     

With every eve deeper and tenderer still;                

He might not in house, field, or garden stir,         

  But her full shape would all his seeing fill;           

And his continual voice was pleasanter 

  To her, than noise of trees or hidden rill;             

Her lute-string gave an echo of his name,                  

She spoilt her half-done broidery with the same.              

Eventually the brothers realise that Isabella’s love will trump their will, and so they murder Lorenzo and bury his body in the forest. But love is greater than death. Lorenzo’s spirit appears to Isabella and tells her about the brutal murder. He begs her to go and weep over his buried body:

Saying moreover, “Isabel, my sweet!
  “Red whortle-berries droop above my head,
“And a large flint-stone weighs upon my feet;
  “Around me beeches and high chestnuts shed   
“Their leaves and prickly nuts; a sheep-fold bleat       
  “Comes from beyond the river to my bed:   
“Go, shed one tear upon my heather-bloom,
“And it shall comfort me within the tomb.

His spirit then guides Isabella to the body. She digs it up and cuts the head off to bury it in a pot in which she plants basil. Isabella slowly fades, crying  endlessly over the basil, which flourishes with her tears.

And so she ever fed it with thin tears,           

Whence thick, and green, and beautiful it grew,              

So that it smelt more balmy than its peers           

Of Basil-tufts in Florence; for it drew    

Nurture besides, and life, from human fears,      

From the fast mouldering head there shut from view:         

So that the jewel, safely casketed,          

Came forth, and in perfumed leafits spread.

The brothers are weary of their sister’s waning health and strange attachment to the pot of basil.  They eventually discover the truth and steal the pot. Shocked by what they find in it, they escape from Florence. Isabella pines for her pot of basil. She eventually goes mad and sadly dies.

The complete poem here.

Another long poem I would like to share with you is the haunting The Eve of St. Agnes.

The poem is set in a medieval castle on a very cold January 20th, the eve of St. Agnes; “ Ah, bitter chill it was! / The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold”.

Legend has it  that if a girl follows certain rules on this eve, she'll receive a vision of the man she will marry. Madeline does just this and sure enough, the man she loves, Porphyro, sneaks into the castle to meet with her lover and elope. Porphyro is regarded as the enemy by Madeline’s family and they would kill him on sight. Luckily he meets, Angela, Madeline’s old nurse.

—"Good Saints! not here, not here;
Follow me, child, or else these stones will be thy bier."

       He follow'd through a lowly arched way,
       Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume,
       And as she mutter'd "Well-a—well-a-day!"
       He found him in a little moonlight room,
       Pale, lattic'd, chill, and silent as a tomb.
       "Now tell me where is Madeline," said he,
       "O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom
       Which none but secret sisterhood may see,
When they St. Agnes' wool are weaving piously."

Angela leads him to Madeline’s chamber where he hides in a closet. After she falls asleep, Porphyro  wakes her up by playing a lute. The picture Keats paints here is so surreal that dream, poetry and narrative blend into a vision of ethereal love. The legend has come true, Madeline sees her lover, but frightened that her family will kill Lorenzo, she accepts to escape with him.  The couple surreptitiously leave the castle and disappear into the stormy night.  

They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;

       Like phantoms, to the iron porch, they glide;

       Where lay the Porter, in uneasy sprawl,

       With a huge empty flaggon by his side:

       The wakeful bloodhound rose, and shook his hide,

       But his sagacious eye an inmate owns:

       By one, and one, the bolts full easy slide:—

       The chains lie silent on the footworn stones;

The key turns, and the door upon its hinges groans.

       And they are gone: ay, ages long ago

       These lovers fled away into the storm.

 Read the poem here.

Keats' poems on love are a deluge of emotion and I shall certainly be returning to them. Poems like Ode on a Grecian Urn,  Bright Star, La Belle Dame Sans Mercy, Ode to Psyche and so many others are priceless gems “upon the night’s starr’d face”.

I will conclude with an extract from one of John Keats’ letters to the woman he loved, Fanny Brawne. These are spontaneous honest words from a passionate lover. They feel like a punch in the stomach.

Upon my Soul I can think of nothing else — The time is passed when I had power to advise and warn you against the unpromising morning of my Life — 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 should be afraid to separate myself far from you. My sweet Fanny, will your heart never change? My love, will it? I have no limit now to my love — Your note came in just here — I cannot be happier away from you — ’T is richer than an Argosy of Pearles. Do not threat me even in jest. 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 this for my Religion — Love is my religion — I could die for that — I could die for you. My Creed is Love and you are its only tenet — You have ravish’d me away by a Power I cannot resist; and yet I could resist till I saw you; and even since I have seen you I have endeavoured often “to reason against the reasons of my Love.” I can do that no more — the pain would be too great — My Love is selfish. I cannot breathe without you.