Study Note for John Keats

        Although dying at twenty-six years old, John Keats has created a lot ode and sonnet at his last three years. Many critics say he has the language of Shakespeare and also romantic symbol that represents their encomium to him. Like Coleridge, Keats has the specific description of this sense- tactile, gustatory, kinetic, visceral, visual and auditory. The most prominent ode is “The Eve of St. Agnes”, and some short poems like “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, “When I have fears that I may cease to be”, “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” “To Autumn” also has high quality.

        Keats talks about the reading experience in “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer”, and it’s an Italian sonnet. The first eight sentences is the question and the rest of six is the answer. He uses the traveling and geographical imagery to explain the advantage of reading and how important the reading is. Although he doesn’t read any works of Homer he also writes many famed pomes, then reading is equal important to traveling. In “When I have fears that I may cease to be” Keats adequately shows his sentimental in romantic period. He worried three problems, first is he can’t write poem anymore, then he can’t study the astrology anymore, the last one is he worried he can’t love his lover anymore, just like the last sentence at the poem: Till love and famed to nothingness do sink. Keats still pursues the true love at his live, but he use the long syllable word “nothingness” represents he thinks the death is permanently.

        “La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad” is a twelve stanza poem, and using refrain at whole poem. La Belle Dame, a sense of beauty, everyone likes the beautiful and exquisite things, so the passerby ask a lot of questions to express his confusion that he should be close to the dame or not. He sends gift to her, riding horse with her, and finding three things to her, but finally he finds that people not to be tricks by the “belle.” Not alike in first poem, ”To Autumn” uses mental picture to describe nature, and content sensory and acoustic imagery. The subject in the poem is nature, comment topic in most romantic poets, and the structure divides into to three parts, early autumn, mid-autumn, and late autumn. Keats describes the different scenery at different part of autumn, then he bring the important metaphor out: the coming of winter.