John Keats
English – Poetry Revision Notes
Covering:
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To one who has been long in city pent
Ode To A Nightingale
On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer
Ode On A Grecian Urn
When I have fears that I may cease to be
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
To Autumn
Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art
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1 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
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2 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
3 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
KEATS, John (2015-2018)
About John Keats
Born in London, England, on October 31, 1795, John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection of
poetry marked by vivid imagery, great sensuous appeal and an attempt to express a philosophy
through classical legend. In 1818 he went on a walking tour in the Lake District. His exposure and
overexertion on that trip brought on the first symptoms of the tuberculosis, which ended his life.
To one who has been long in city pent
To one who has been long in city pent
To one who has been long in city pent,
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer
Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
And gentle tale of love and languishment?
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
That falls through the clear ether silently.
Summary
This poem is a sonnet where the narrator, Keats himself, glories nature and the open
landscape. City life is claustrophobic with its filth and gloom.
In contrast, the poet finds the country-side a breath of fresh air, an escape from the
suffocating and cheerless atmosphere of industrial London.
He extols the pleasure of looking up into the sky after being pent up in the city for so long. It
is a celebration of natural existence, a solemn rite almost, to look into the open face of
‘Heaven’ and ‘breathe a prayer’.
4 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
Annotation
To one who has been long in city pent
To one who has been long in city pent, (confined)
'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
And open face of heaven,—to breathe a prayer (to gaze on nature, most likely the
countryside [the city’s opposite]); (‘a prayer’ both ‘a prayer’ of thanks and a metaphor for
fresh, clean air)
Full in the smile of the blue firmament. (‘firmament’ – the vault or arch of the sky: the
heavens); (‘the smile’, likely to be a metaphor for the sun and/or its shine)
Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair (this is Keats arguing that there is no-one
happier than this ‘he’ by using this rhetorical question)
Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair (implies a light breeze blowing); (‘debonair’ –
fashionable, attractive)
And gentle tale of love and languishment? (Being weak or feeble; existing in miserable or
disheartening conditions); (ironic choice of noun, a description arguably of the ‘city’ in
which the narrator was ‘pent’)
Returning home at evening, with an ear
Catching the notes of Philomel,—an eye (‘Philomel’ – the nightingale from
Ovid's Metamorphoses; Philomela, after being raped and mutilated by her sister's
husband, Tereus, obtains her revenge and is transformed into a nightingale, a bird noted
for its song. Because of the violence associated with the myth, the song of the nightingale
is often depicted or interpreted as a sorrowful lament)
Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career, (‘career’ – swift movement in an
uncontrolled manner); (small cloud portrayed as a ship sailing what’s left of the blue sky)
He mourns that day so soon has glided by: (time is flying for the narrator because he
is happy; Keats extends/inverts the metaphor of the previous line; the cloud’s journey is a
metaphor for time passing)
E'en like the passage of an angel's tear (‘passage’ again a reference to the cloud, to time,
and possibly something flying through the sky)
That falls through the clear ether silently. (‘ether’ – the clear sky; a further metaphor
for how time slips by, particularly when we are happy and/or enjoying a particular time or
day like the narrator of this poem)
5 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
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6 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.
7 John Keats – Poetry English Revision notes.