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Poems 1817
This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.
64 pages, Paperback
First published September 1, 1985
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About the author
John Keats
1,412 books2,526 followersRich melodic works in classical imagery of English poet John Keats include "
The Eve of Saint Agnes
," "
Ode on a Grecian Urn
," and "
To Autumn
," all in 1819.
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
Works of Percy Bysshe Shelley include "Adonais," an elegy of 1821 to John Keats.
Work of the principal of the Romantic movement of England received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day during his short life. He nevertheless posthumously immensely influenced poets, such as Alfred Tennyson. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize poetry, including a series of odes, masterpieces of Keats among the most popular poems in English literature. Most celebrated letters of Keats expound on his aesthetic theory of "negative capability."
Wikipedia page of the author
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
May 12, 2018
Review soon.
February 23, 2024
In between finishing the epistles section and starting on the sonnets two weeks ago, I was walking home in the evening when I caught a glimpse of two people sharing a lengthy embrace in the hallway of their home. In the biting cold, that scene was something of a surprise bonfire, as if the warmth and the light from that hallway was spilling out onto the dimly lit street I was on.
Then I thought of the walks which Keats made between Edmonton, where he was an apprentice of the local doctor, and Enfield, where he had developed his love for poetry and an ardent belief in liberal values while studying at the boy's academy there a few years earlier. It's one of those dainty pieces of autobiographical detail that seem to pass over as a "fun fact", but may eventually strike you with the weight of its timelessness when you least expect it to.
After shifts at the clinic, where Keats would witness the inadequacies of 19th century medicine, he would trek back to the academy at Enfield to read poetry with his former headmaster John Clarke and his son, Charles Cowden Clarke. To Keats, poetry possesses the unique potential to heal, "to sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man."
This collection of poems - Keats's first - inspires the same warmth of that surprise peek at affection between strangers. Keats constructs a kind of coterie here, threading schoolfriends, publishers, his brothers, and a pantheon of mythical and literary figures through his pages. It is a sociable book with seemingly social ends - ideas about love, indebtedness, beauty, nature, freedom, and the role of poetry in the world come to the fore. The voice is boyish, ambitious, self-conscious. The BBC's Reeta Chakrabti writes: "If Keats was a first love, then Shelley was a mature one". Even so, Keats to me feels more grounded and honest in his yearning and in his recognition of the ties that bind.
In his epistle "To Charles Cowden Clarke", Keats reminisces about the "shady lanes" he meandered through with Clarke and their "chat that ceased not / When at night-fall among our books we got." "What might I have been", Keats asks, if he had never met Clarke, never attended the academy, and never made those walks between Edmonton and Enfield? Keats would die just four years later, at the age of 25, and perhaps Clarke, who would live till he was 89, later flipped the question and wondered how things might have been different had his dear friend lived.
With Keats, as with a walk home in the night, you sometimes get more than you bargain for.
Then I thought of the walks which Keats made between Edmonton, where he was an apprentice of the local doctor, and Enfield, where he had developed his love for poetry and an ardent belief in liberal values while studying at the boy's academy there a few years earlier. It's one of those dainty pieces of autobiographical detail that seem to pass over as a "fun fact", but may eventually strike you with the weight of its timelessness when you least expect it to.
After shifts at the clinic, where Keats would witness the inadequacies of 19th century medicine, he would trek back to the academy at Enfield to read poetry with his former headmaster John Clarke and his son, Charles Cowden Clarke. To Keats, poetry possesses the unique potential to heal, "to sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man."
This collection of poems - Keats's first - inspires the same warmth of that surprise peek at affection between strangers. Keats constructs a kind of coterie here, threading schoolfriends, publishers, his brothers, and a pantheon of mythical and literary figures through his pages. It is a sociable book with seemingly social ends - ideas about love, indebtedness, beauty, nature, freedom, and the role of poetry in the world come to the fore. The voice is boyish, ambitious, self-conscious. The BBC's Reeta Chakrabti writes: "If Keats was a first love, then Shelley was a mature one". Even so, Keats to me feels more grounded and honest in his yearning and in his recognition of the ties that bind.
In his epistle "To Charles Cowden Clarke", Keats reminisces about the "shady lanes" he meandered through with Clarke and their "chat that ceased not / When at night-fall among our books we got." "What might I have been", Keats asks, if he had never met Clarke, never attended the academy, and never made those walks between Edmonton and Enfield? Keats would die just four years later, at the age of 25, and perhaps Clarke, who would live till he was 89, later flipped the question and wondered how things might have been different had his dear friend lived.
With Keats, as with a walk home in the night, you sometimes get more than you bargain for.
April 30, 2024
Poems 1817, by John Keats
Worthy of the huge respect he has gained. A truly tragic romantic. **** Includes:
“Dedication to Leigh Hunt” – ‘Glory and loveliness have pass’d away ..’
Opens his “POEMS (1817)”.
.
“I Stood Tip-Toe” – a 242 lie poem. “He was a Poet, sure a lover too..” (line 193).
.
“To Hope” – splendid poem, example:
"... Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof! .."
.
“To George Felton Mathew” – Expressive! ‘Yet that is vain - O Mathew!’
"... Some flowery spot, sequester’d, wild, romantic,
That often must have seen a poet frantic; ...
... With reverence would we speak of all the sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages:
And thou shouldst moralize on Milton’s blindness,
And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness
.... While to the rugged north our musing turns
We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns...."
.
“Sonnet 1 - To My Brother George (poem) -
".. But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?"
.
“Sonnet VII [O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell]” – full of energy!
"O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, ..."
{Although personally I must say there is beauty in abandoned buildings!}
.
“Sonnet X [To one who has been long in city pent]” – Here is a cool line!
"... Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:.."
.
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” - He must have been moved by emotional sentimentalism ***
.
“Sonnet XII: On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour” - Just like David Tennant's The Doctor, he doesn't want to go! "... For what a height my spirit is contending! / 'Tis not content so soon to be alone."
.
“Grasshopper and Cricket” - ‘The poetry of earth is never dead.’ ***
.
“Sonnet 17 - Happy is England!” – Longing for more than just home
".. Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment / For skies Italian, and an inward groan / To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,.." But he still wants to get away!
.
“Sleep and Poetry” – 404 line poem.
“.. Some precious book from out its snug retreat, To cluster round it when we next shall meet.” That’s delightful.
“And up I rose refresh’d, and glad, and gay, / Resolving to begin that very day / These lines; and howsoever they be done, / I leave them as a father does his son.”
Worthy of the huge respect he has gained. A truly tragic romantic. **** Includes:
“Dedication to Leigh Hunt” – ‘Glory and loveliness have pass’d away ..’
Opens his “POEMS (1817)”.
.
“I Stood Tip-Toe” – a 242 lie poem. “He was a Poet, sure a lover too..” (line 193).
.
“To Hope” – splendid poem, example:
"... Whene'er I wander, at the fall of night,
Where woven boughs shut out the moon's bright ray,
Should sad Despondency my musings fright,
And frown, to drive fair Cheerfulness away,
Peep with the moonbeams through the leafy roof,
And keep that fiend Despondence far aloof! .."
.
“To George Felton Mathew” – Expressive! ‘Yet that is vain - O Mathew!’
"... Some flowery spot, sequester’d, wild, romantic,
That often must have seen a poet frantic; ...
... With reverence would we speak of all the sages
Who have left streaks of light athwart their ages:
And thou shouldst moralize on Milton’s blindness,
And mourn the fearful dearth of human kindness
.... While to the rugged north our musing turns
We well might drop a tear for him, and Burns...."
.
“Sonnet 1 - To My Brother George (poem) -
".. But what, without the social thought of thee,
Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?"
.
“Sonnet VII [O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell]” – full of energy!
"O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,—
Nature’s observatory—whence the dell, ..."
{Although personally I must say there is beauty in abandoned buildings!}
.
“Sonnet X [To one who has been long in city pent]” – Here is a cool line!
"... Watching the sailing cloudlet’s bright career,
He mourns that day so soon has glided by:.."
.
“On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” - He must have been moved by emotional sentimentalism ***
.
“Sonnet XII: On Leaving Some Friends At An Early Hour” - Just like David Tennant's The Doctor, he doesn't want to go! "... For what a height my spirit is contending! / 'Tis not content so soon to be alone."
.
“Grasshopper and Cricket” - ‘The poetry of earth is never dead.’ ***
.
“Sonnet 17 - Happy is England!” – Longing for more than just home
".. Yet do I sometimes feel a languishment / For skies Italian, and an inward groan / To sit upon an Alp as on a throne,.." But he still wants to get away!
.
“Sleep and Poetry” – 404 line poem.
“.. Some precious book from out its snug retreat, To cluster round it when we next shall meet.” That’s delightful.
“And up I rose refresh’d, and glad, and gay, / Resolving to begin that very day / These lines; and howsoever they be done, / I leave them as a father does his son.”
March 17, 2020
I'm sure if you're knowledgeable about poetry it would be a lot higher rating but I guess I'm really just not into it I don't know much so I didn't really care for it but I wouldn't wanna discourage anybody else from reading him in after all he is one of the great poets
December 12, 2025
My first foray into Keats beyond the Odes which I studied in college. "To Hope" was my favorite from this volume. Going to be honest, I'm not much of a fan of the Romantics' writing style. Might not continue with his other works.
March 24, 2018
While the poems vary in subject, there is enough poetry able appreciation for nature to appease anyone who is a nature lover.
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November 22, 2020Keats' great long poem "Sleep and Poetry" is one I will be rereading for years to come.
October 13, 2022
Upon second reading Keats appear to be somewhat... endearing.
June 19, 2024
Beautifully read on Librivox by Peter Tucker.
Poor Keats, fated muse.
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
Poor Keats, fated muse.
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”
Read
September 11, 2015Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell
No God, no demon of severe response
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell
Then to my human heart I turn at once:
Heart, thou and I are here, sad and alone,
Say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! Forever must I moan
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain?
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease
My fancy to it's utmost blisses spreads
Yet would I on this very midnight cease
And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds
Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed
But death intenser, death is life's high meed.
No God, no demon of severe response
Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell
Then to my human heart I turn at once:
Heart, thou and I are here, sad and alone,
Say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!
O darkness! darkness! Forever must I moan
To question heaven and hell and heart in vain?
Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease
My fancy to it's utmost blisses spreads
Yet would I on this very midnight cease
And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds
Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed
But death intenser, death is life's high meed.
June 28, 2014
As always Keats took his life events and people who are friends, lovers and foes and left to the world of gods and heavenly lands to draw pictures that cant be compared to any other artistic works.
Keats the boy who showed me how to live adventures by a piece of paper and a restless pen! And a love of nature that can never be defeated.
Keats the boy who showed me how to live adventures by a piece of paper and a restless pen! And a love of nature that can never be defeated.
November 30, 2014
Excellent poems by John Keats.
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May 26, 2015Keats' language is sublime. That's the main reason I love reading him so much. He inspires me so. But this is the first time I've actually read a whole anthology of his.
Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews