Poetic Interlude

Keats Appreciation Time

I love this poem. It is delicious.

 On Sitting Down To Read King Lear Once Again

O golden-tongued Romance with serene lute!

   Fair plumed Syren! Queen of far away!

   Leave melodizing on this wintry day,

Shut up thine olden pages, and be mute:

Adieu! for once again the fierce dispute,

   Betwixt damnation and impassion'd clay

   Must I burn through; once more humbly assay

The bitter-sweet of this Shakespearian fruit.

Chief Poet! and ye clouds of Albion,

   Begetters of our deep eternal theme,

When through the old oak forest I am gone,

   Let me not wander in a barren dream,

But when I am consumed in the fire,

Give me new Phoenix wings to fly at my desire.

                                            

                                                -John Keats (~1818)

I once had a late night discussion with a dear friend of mine on poetry, philosophy, life. We had some drinks and it was inevitably followed with talk about this stuff, who isn't a philosopher when they deprive their brain of oxygen? After our discussion he went to bed and I wrote a poem. That's something I do. I write good poems and bad poems, funny poems and serious poems, alcohol induced poems and flaming passion induced poetry. What the following poem is I don't know. I just know I wrote it because our conversation had included Keats, well, I included Keats in it. Enjoy, or not:

Fierce Dispute
Oak forests which I’ve only read
What paths have you for such as I?
And am I thus supposed to dread
What’s only met with my mind’s eye?
Am I to quiver, or to shake
When I’ve no reason to be frightful?
Or is this fear a mere mistake;
My mind is simply something spiteful?
What lies beyond I do not know
Nor do I claim in any fashion,
And though onward I cannot go,
I’ll go and fight with fired passion,
What good may come, and come it may,
Of my great angered indignation?
I’ll not digress to kneeled pray
Against my foe of cursed damnation!
I’ll hold up my arms tho they are clay
And proudly stand against the grain,
And when I’m through with you they’ll say: *
He did his best. His works remain.
                                         -Byron (2005)

The email included a footnote where the second last line could be more hopeless and read instead: "and when I'm through I hope they say". I prefer to not be so hopeless but I'm not about to argue that we stand a lick of chance either. The message also had this sentence in it: there is more room in the bottle for oxygen now than when you left. If that is any indication of my muse. Scotch: fueling foolish ambitions for a really long time.