Dorothy A. Johnson
English II. (7)
March 2, 1923.
Endymion - A Thing of Beauty
[Graded B- by the professor]John Keats, boy poet and dreamer, has always been a source of the greatest wonder and admiration to me. And such was Endymion when I first read it. The first lines, so familiar to everyone, are fitting, as applied to the poem itself. The plot and characters of Endymion, fascinating as they are, appear to me only a substantial background for the exquisite beauty of the poetic pictures. It is as a "thing of beauty" that Endymion impressed me.
While it seems almost sacriligious [sic] to attempt to analyze something so purely aesthetic, it does no harm to dive a little way into the secret of Keat's [sic] genius as a master painter of poetic pictures. Endymion shows Keats' marvelous gift of description without the rather abstruse use of Greek mythology with which Milton puzzles the uninitiated
in that field. [professor crossed out that phrase]Beauty --- will keep
A quiet bower for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.The musical lilt of the lines seems to breath [sic] a kind of peace and quietness.
Therefore 'tis with full happiness that I
Will trace the story of Enymion. [sic]
The very music of that name has gone
Into my being.There is music in these lines to give just hte impression that Keats wished to give and how he did it is a secret too cunning for an ordinary mortal to penetrate. It is that trail of making music out of mere words which makes the sound alone of Endymion so bewitching.
Now while the early budders are just new
And run in mazes of the youngest hue
About old forests.The use of the word youngest brings a picture of the soft pale green of new growth among the deeper hues of the ancient trees. And what could be more delightfully [sic] than "the year grows lush in juicy stalks." It makes one's mouth water to say it. "Lush" is one of the most expressive words in our language. Its effect is one of such luxuriant superabundance. and who but Keats would think of calling clover-blossoms "globes"!
[Professor inserted this paragraph break]
Now we come to the description of the setting of the story: "a mighty forest" with its gloomy shades, sequestered deep, where no man went." He pictures a place of enchantment and mystery which is a paradise for lively imaginations. And again, the picture of the scene at sunrise is so exquisitely beautiful that the more one reads it the more on revels in it.
"And the dew
Has taken fairy fantasies to strew
Daisies upon the sacred sword last eve
And so the dawned light with pomp receive."is one of the loveliest bits, because it is so new and unusual. Sunrises are the most overworked of all poetical properties, but Keats adds a freshening touch and new glory to an old but still much love[d] subject.
- As does the nightingale, up perched high
And cloistered among cool, bunched leaves -
She sings but to her love, nor e'er conceives
How tiptoe Night holds back her dark grey hood.The nightingale is another much used subject for poetical effusion, but "tiptoe Night", suggesting the vastness and inconceivable height of the sky at night, is a novel way of expressing an old thought.
One could go on indefinately [sic], quoting passage after passage of exquisite music and pictures. It would take a fountain of ink to express an appreciation of them all. Keats' Endymion, and all his poetry, in fact, is not immortalized by its "high seriousness"[.] He does not philosophize about the great truths of life. The exteriors of his life held little joy for him, but he painted for himself a land of beauty and of the spirit where his soul might find peace even when his body was tortured by poverty and disease. His love of beauty served as a "flowery band to bind him to the earth, spite of despondence" and "of all the unhealthy and oer' darkened ways made for our searching." He invites all kindred souls to share that love of beauty with him.
I have said nothing here about plot and characters and poetical technique. As a lover of Keats and all the realm of fancy. I have only tried to show Endymion as a "thing of beauty."
[Professor leaves a comment on the last paragraph: "Why not at beginning?"]