VIII SLEEP AND POETRY In the minor poems of 1817 we find hints of N genius. "Sleep and Poetry," the last of the collection, shows genius in the larval state. It is easy to rail at its floridity and obscurity. A little sympathy, or even open-mindedness, will detect an atmosphere of awe. This is "the Chamber of Maiden Thought." A fire burns here, the fire of a vestal fane. It is the heart's confessional and the critic should listen to these ardent outpourings of a soul with priest-like deference. The title recalls the library of Hunt, the naps on the couch, the poetic aspirations amid the busts and pictures. Sleep and poetry, indeed, are only points of departure for Keats to talk about himself, his art and his hopes for the future. The poem opens with a display of figurative language, lustrous, incongruous. Sleep is a riddle propounded in eight queries. It then experiences several incarnations: as a watchful fairy, a nurse with lullabies, an imp with mischief for a beauty's hair. Poetry calls forth nine epithets and suggests two methods of inspiration, by thunder and by whisper. Life is described in a chain of eight metaphors, two of them worthy of remembrance: the light uplifting of a maiden's veil; the slumber of an Indian while his boat dashes down the falls. Such a profusion of imagery is gaudy ostentation. Keats has indulged in a riotous abuse of the analogical faculty. In this poem occurs the well-known attack on Pope and the school of Boileau, an attack that stirred the hostility of Byron. Here again Keats is in revolt against the rational mechanical epigram style of the eighteenth century. The diatribe is doubtless an echo of the warfare by Hunt, although Keats had a natural antipathy for Pope and all his followers. He regards them as chippers and filers; callous to beauty; blasphemers of "the bright Lyrist." One sentence ridicules the technique of the heroic coupleteers most effectively: They swayed about upon a rocking-horse And thought it Pegasus. There is another passage, hitherto regarded as obscure, in which Keats makes a stricture upon those contemporary poets whose work he other wise greets with delight. This stricture helps to define his own individuality. The dark lines speak of certain subjects as monster Polyphemes and of sheer strength as comparable to a fallen angel. Hunt gives a clue of interpretation. He says the lines refer to "the morbidity that taints the productions of the Lake poets." The censure would then fall upon Southey for his evil magicians in the Domdaniel caverns; upon Coleridge for the witchcraft of Lady Geraldine. And Wordsworth, too, may be slightly under the ban; for the stout-hearted Jeffrey once declared that certain of his poems filled him with “a giddy terror." Keats is thus seen in opposition to that current of wild romanticism which came from Germany, flowed muddily through "Monk" Lewis and Anne Radcliffe and clarified into poetry with the "Lakers." The tales of terror had no fascination for him. He was blind to that penny-dreadful muse from Germany which favored bugaboos and sought to inspire haunting fears. 66 'Sleep and Poetry" reveals his high conception of his calling. He abjures the dogmatic authority of reason, maintained by Pope. He would restore to poetry the supremacy of imagination. But he would not permit the imagina tion to be a purveyor of emotions of dread; to conjure up Domdaniel demons or even beautiful malignant witches. Poetry is "awful sweet and holy." It is a safeguard against worldliness and folly. It has a virtue to cleanse the soul for "the great Maker's presence." Its mission is to be the friend of man, to soothe his cares, to lift his thoughts. The lyrical cry of his art is "Rejoice! Rejoice!" And they shall be accounted poet-kings Who simply tell the most heart-easing things. And the cry of his present desire is for ten years of preparatory education. First of all he would have experience in the refinement of the senses. How naïvely he gives the details! He would sleep on the grass, feed upon fruits, catch nymphs in the forest, steal kisses, bite their white shoulders, watch their dances, follow one into a tropical bower to rest -note the simile-like two gems in a pearly shell. This is not sensuality. It all happens in Pan's realm. If there be any indiscretion in the printing of such dalliance, as suggestive of the Babes in the Woods, let it be excused on the ground that the inexperienced poet, aiming at the simplicity of ancient pastoral innocence, fell short into simpleness. Even the austere must be touched by the simple deliciousness. The refinement of the senses is only prelimin2. ary. The higher education of his desire is the knowledge of actual life; the experience of virile emotions; if need be, the agonies of struggle. Keats here seems to yearn with a man's yearning for the Odyssean trials that give play to the heroic energies. Hitherto his life has been easy, remote from storm and stress. In his inexperience he pictures the great hurly-burly of the world in an apocalyptic day-dream. The charioteer of life, riding upon a cloud, leads the visionary people. They pass, in streaming procession, laden with joy or sorrow or sin, lured on by everfleeting music. A few of the lines are almost Dantesque in the economy of diction and the range of second sight. They recall that sad procession in the "Inferno," the sandy plain, the pelting balls of fire. Lo! how they murmur, laugh and smile and weep: Some with their faces muffled to the ear Between their arms. Some clear in youthful bloom Some looking back and some with upward gaze. |