Keats as a poet

1. St Xavier’s College, Mahuadanr
Characteristics of Keats as a Poet.
Keats was an artist pure and simple and kept himself studiously aloof from
the cross currents and sweeping waves of revolutionary idealism. Keats is the only
romantic poet in whose works even the faint rumblings of revolutionary thunder is
not heard. The study of his poetry does not reveal him as a poet of the 19th Century
tossed by the waves of revolutionary idolism. It appears that Keats is the poet of
some ancient times when people had plenty of leisure to linger with tales of love and
magic.
The fact is that Keats as a poet had no political mission or aim. His only
object as a poet was to create aesthetic delight for the readers and to provide them
means of escape from the hectic life. He loved beauty, nature and all these received
the utmost consideration in his poetry. Keats believed that ‘poetry should come as
naturally to the poet as leaves to a tree and that if poetry comes not as naturally as
the leaves to a tree; it had better not to come at all.’
Keats indebtedness to the Greeks and Elizabethans:
Keats took his inspiration from the Greeks as well as Elizabethans.He was a
Greek born in the 19th Century, cultivating the adoration of the Greek love for
beauty, art, nature and pictorial painting. But side by side he had a love for the
luxurianceand Splendor of the Elizabethans and delighted in fine excess which the
Greeks did not favor.
Sensuousness in Keats Poetry:
Keats as a poet is abundantly and enchantingly sensuous. As a matter of fact
sensuousness operates everywhere across his poetry. Sensuousness is a Paramount
bias of Keats genius. It was his mission to interpret not the highest spiritual life but
the highest type of “sensuous beauty”. His art is full of passion, it is above all
aspiration and desire; and the object of this desire is not the intellectual beauty but
that which reveals itself to the enchantment of the senses.

2. Keats loved sensuousness and his early poetry is rich in sensuous pictures
appealing to our sense of color, slight, smell and touch. In his early career sensation
was all important to Keats and he welcomed every lovely sensation and revealed in
it to the full whenever the opportunity occurred. But he gradually realized that the
be-all and end-all of a high poetic life was not mere indulgence in sensuous pictures.
He started taking interest in human life and in the sorrows and sufferings which
fell to the lot of a wearied humanity. He began to cherish a vision of life to which
none might have access.
Adoration of Beauty:
Unfortunately the human-phase in Keats poetry did not come and the bonds
of life was shattered before the poet could enter the new field of human adventure.
But all through his poetic career he remained faithful to his vision and adoration of
beauty. Beauty was the Goddess of his life and he burnt incense at the altar of
beauty in all its forms and phases, physical, intellectual and spiritual. The central
part of Keats life was the existence of the spiritual essence called beauty. He
interested himself in revealing this beauty to human senses and proclaiming its
universal importance, choosing poetry as a medium. His poetry shows the musical
creation of beauty. His sense of beauty dominates all things. His sensuousness is
the result of this principle of beauty as he rightly says;
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever;
It loveliness increases.”
In the presentation of the beauties of nature Keats is mainly interested in the
presentation of sensuous pictures. Whereas Wordsworth spiritualizes and Shelly
intellectualizes nature, Keats is content to express beauty through the senses. The
color, the scent, the touch, the pulsating music - these are the things that stir him
to his depths. There is not a mood of earth he does not love, not a season that will
not cheer and inspire him.
Keats' Pessimism:
Keats’ personal life was one of despair and suffering and echoes of that
despair and gloom are found all over his works. Keats like Shelly was over-powered

3. by the feeling of pessimism and melancholy and both these romantic poets invited
death to come and take away the sorrow of their miserable existence. Keats' vision
of human life had a touch of melancholy and in the “Ode to Nightingale” he
expressed what he considered human life to be-a tale of misery and suffering, where
beauty cannot keep its radiant eyes.
Worshipper of Nature:
The poet sought to forget the pessimistic currents of his life by adoring
Nature. Keats like Shelley and Byron was a great lover of Nature and in the
presence of the beautiful aspects of nature he almost forgot all his sorrows and
sufferings. For Keats the glory was always in the setting sun and in the autumnal
fields. The Sparrow at his window elated his spirits. He loved the fruits and flowers
of nature and he presented their lovely spectacles in a colorful manner with the
splendor of an artist’s pen.
Keats' Style:
Keats had a style of his own and used words with creativity and delicacy. He
was like Shakespeare in the use of compound words. He used the English language
as Spencer and Milton had used it, as a free man not confined to ‘the language of
the age’.
Keats died very early in life, but he stands very high. In the words of Shelly it
is true that;
“Till the future dares
Forget the past, his fate and fame shall be
An echo and a light unto eternity.”