Best Keats Poems
Thy Wondrous Life Was As A Butterfly's Brief Stay,
Poets Tribute Series, third poet, John Keats
Poet, where flows tears for thy premature demise
tragic death of thy soft heart, body, gifted soul
majestic verses from a poet truly wise
poems of deep splendor, thy words did so extol.
Thy wondrous Life was as a butterfly's brief stay.
And in thy heart, triumphant was thy sweet word play.
Poet, can praise seep into thy slumbering grave
or upon hearing such voice, does thee seek to rise
and in true caring, thy words again hope to save
by talented hand, let pen scribble out surprise.
Thy wondrous Life was as a butterfly's brief stay.
And in thy heart, triumphant was thy sweet word play.
Poet, does moon's light cast shine into thy abode
as blowing sands of time, thy rest slow ticks away
can spirit, with honor, thy sad story be told
of poet, that Fate's hand, forced thy dear Life thee pay.
Thy wondrous Life was as a butterfly's brief stay.
And in thy heart, triumphant was thy sweet word play.
Poet, not enough we admire from distant time
magnificence of thy genius in golden verse
thy heart once beat in verses heavenly sublime
before death delivered its dark and early curse.
Thy wondrous Life was as a butterfly's brief stay.
And in thy heart, triumphant was thy sweet word play.
Robert J. Lindley, 10-28-2019
Rhyme, ( Tragedy of the death of a young genius and truly brilliant poet )
Tribute To The Memory Of John Keats
Child of the storm-swift Hermes, lithe and strong
To Trojan tumult, had the gods thus willed,
They gave thee one short year of riper song
And more melodious than ever filled
The heart of youth; they gave thee power to build
A noble altar for thy offering
Amid the heedlessness that had long chilled
True poesy, true souls that fain would sing.
And thou, from depths of silent agony,
Hast left unto the world such rich bequest
Of love's own loveliness that thy last rest
Becometh as the soul's own sanctuary
To all that long have learnt of thee to wear
Sun-raiment in the shadowy House of Care.
R.J. Lindley
Sept. 9th 1975
When I have fears that I may fail to die,
After all my mind has given to my pen,
No worldly wonders left there to defy;
No answers to the mysteries within.
What worry it would be on how I fared,
For surely it's lowly life to live,
To think that this is all that chance had spared;
To know that this is all I had to give.
And when I feel, foul bitterness of years,
Knowing I shall bear these with a smile,
I simply bite my tongue and fight my tears;
The raging rivers, hidden in my guile.
On the wide world I stand with sums untold,
For love and fame is all I have to hold.
Keats—Romantic Humanist
Romanticus-Extraordinaire
John Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci
Circe-Enchantress to all.
Beautiful, deadly in her elfin grot
Supernatural-nous
She wept and sighed full sore
Hath thee in “Keatsian” thrall.
Gary Bateman, Copyright © All Rights Reserved,
August 17, 2015 (Double Dactyl)
I would not use, words of hyperbole,
To describe you, my friend.
As i am not WORDSWORTH,
To explain your heart and your beauteous forms.
I do lack the Imagination of KEATS,
To gracefully praise your songs.
Nor have I achieved the vision of COLERIDGE,
To see past your earthly charms.
Oh dear! , I am just an ordinary guy,
who at his lonely hours,
sitting on thy couch,
Recollect the memories,
of such sublime pleasures,
Spent on those halls of ivy, the cafeteria, the lake, and the park.
Those memories that brings a smile on my face,
That now i know what blessed mood really feels like,
What it is like getting a relief,
from the weary weight,
of this dusty selfish world.
That now i do realize,
The greatest gift of GOD,
Given to me,
Is the privilege of your FRIENDSHIP,
that leads me,
To the path of kindness and joy,
Until the river of my heart,
Reaches its horizon,
To walk upon its eternal lonely path...
Keats’ Nightingale
The romantic poets were too early to postulate total atheism,
And so freshened up the church by aligning god with nature,
And I believe they had a preference for nature over god or theism,
Because they never posit him as social with high, tall stature.
Keats says that the nightingale exemplifies nature as active,
As bestowing upon all human beings meaning, sense and worth,
Since the bird’s song objectifies how nature truly is effective,
Fulfilled by happiness, and aimed at contentment and rebirth.
Nature triggers in us thoughts and words to settle and allure,
Offers us our language to dispel pain and find the cure,
And Keats contends that poetry, the credibility of its form,
Epitomises what nature proffers, a receptacle rather warm.
When you feel awkwardly suicidal with nowhere else to turn,
Nature lullabies you into your own sense, one you can rip and burn;
No controlled access freeways, no road signs for your safety,
Only soft, quiet communication that's never guilty of brevity.
Just as nature is beautiful, so Keats claims people as beautiful too,
As he uses the word beauty right in the middle of his nature exposé;
He referred to flora, the moon, the stars, the forest and what seems true,
Tnat song of the nightingale that's for anyone, as this bird is not choosey.
He suggests that light or positivity in nature means movement,
That the soft breeze dispels the gloom and mossy pavement;
Quantum physics does reduce matter back down to interactive particles,
In which kinetic energy can be mistaken for minuscule, motionless articles.
His mentor is the nightingale as part of nature’s whole,
No minister or clergyman to advise him on his soul,
Stillness and bird song scent his poisoned air surrounding,
And it is all but for the silence of that beauteous music, astounding.
Nature does not irritate him when he surmises and introspects,
But upholds itself in majestic grandeur with unquestionable prospects;
It speaks about life, your life, your daily happenings and exotic dreams,
And forever exists for us when sense is just not within our means.
Dear John,
A unique Epitaph you, yourself, penned so well
“Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Though many have misunderstood your epitaph.
Which means “ Fame and indeed life is fleeting”
Surely your fame was fleeting during your life-time.
Even Shakespeare confirms the true meaning
In Henry VIII, through Griffith who observes
“Men’s evil manner live in brass; their virtues
We write in waters”
So many misunderstood your genius writings
That is why The review called you a disciple of “Cockney Poetry”
And a severe comments on Endymion
“Go back to the apothecary shop Mr. John Keats…..”
Unluckily they did not read your magnificent Odes
Swinburne considered The Ode to a Nightingale
“The final masterpiece of human work for all ages”
Critic Helen calls the Odes, Ultimate embodiment.
Like me, the poets all around our globe get inspired by
“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree
It had better not come at all”
Your words like leaves are still on the tips of every tongue
There isn’t a single moment
People don’t quote you, write about you, speak about you.
I repeat your epitaph
““Here lies one whose name was writ in water”
Only all that was mortal your grave contains
Your name and fame exist everywhere like Zephyr.
+++++++
+++++++
May 30, 2014
Form: Free Verse
Eighth Place Win
Contest: Letter to a poet by Monterey Sirak
O burgeoning soul of sweet things
mellowed to summer's surge,
with autumn's dim appraisal
loitered to a final song of ditties,
the oozes of eve ferment
my fewest keen-felt purges;
Apollo upon his throne spinning rhyme
wild and weary in his gilded city,
shall he sing thy posy prims
in deep delved halls
with lamenting love on his lips ----
stars his eyes,
moons his garland,
and zephyr, his breath
honeyed in Elven tongues?
How I faint to find my words
whistled in wind,
some blacker beauty in light,
some arrayed longing
begging from dark,
Mountain to moe-hill
in the shades of vales,
the swell of seas
soothed in tinge;
Mother Earth my palette ----
She of rainbow hues
and Bright Stars!
How kingdoms fall harsh,
lidless in forest dim
darkness! darkness!
too barren, too ravished....
naked without even shadow;
shall I clothe thee with wisdom?
Sprinkle thy skin
with the canvas of the heavens?
Steep in the silts of rills
and the leavened soils
of bubbling brooks
drink thy vintage feverish
for the nectar of nightingales
soaked in song
the gods shall push thy pen
prancing, dark winged
as smooth-perched rooks
O wan child fettered and foiled!
thou needed a swifter love all along;
thou canst express with bitter deeds ----
idle words too sober without melody,
a better posy than Shakespeare's?
JOHN KEATS
This then
more words to Keats
and wonder where the man might be
sleeping now within his dark
or living yet in you and me?
With no desire of telling us
the things he's feeling now
or yes, it burns, the will is there,
but doesn't tell him how
to reach our minds so far away
thru vast diminsions come between
living now and living then
that we have never seen.
Or gone forever to the dead?
Whooeee! Then what's the use?
Off hanging on to our life
why don't we turn it loose?
I'd rather know him dead and gone
and hidden by a wall
invisible to our eyes
than not know him at all
and hate to think that words and thoughts
are all he left behind--
and accidents we are
turn out as tricks of mind.
© ron Arbuthnot
Fake admirers of John Keats are spotted,
To check out if their luck goes as plotted,
Accepted the challenge,
They were so brave,
But they turned out to be kindergarten kids, so naive,
How come a person claims to be Keats' admirer?
If he hasn't faced the pain and is not a survivor,
Whoever hasn't read John Keats' letters,
Should be tied with a long chain of fetters.
The philosophers in this group drowned and dead,
They'd found a purpose in Lela, or their beloved,
When asked a question about Keats, they fell to the ground,
Some were bold enough to answer; the rest made no sound.
Written in response to questions asked to John Keat's admirers.
We tender that special moment that was well earned, spent in our fabled youth's labyrinth passages beholden to young hearts locked in eternal time for e'er so oft consequent the key of memories call. It beckons me now in subsequent years of a pensive soul tryst with thyself. Loneliness fades grasped by natures blooming redolences proffering counsel to evaporate my soul resplendent aspiration to utterance, awakening welcomed birds to flight and favor a dusky crown bejeweled with distant stars flickering arousal as a moon in its laborious mood o'er guiding men to sort out words of worn-out paper neatly tucked away neath backseats of a row vehicles parked on a hillside crowded lane. A cooled engine warms my car as I leave behind a season of mist and mellow fruitfulness.
2020 January 28
“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness” By John Keats
you cannot calculate my legacy in monetary value
or in market shares
neither in some property
nor anything tangible
I leave you my soul
recorded in poetry
and thoughts
I share
with those of you with an ear for the essence of me
but unlike Keats not have my name written in water
My friend, so young your countenance remains
When word’s cold death exacted Britain’s pain
In one brief moment quill caressed page,
papyrus breathed to life, precocious sage.
When first I gazed upon your stanzas long
mesmerizing trance from an angelic song.
A thing of beauty is the ink once spilled
in Eton’s courtyard ‘ere long days were filled.
Unending dream of dear Endymion’s sleep
imbued my soul in verses piercing deep.
Bright stars like flowers and far-off Ganymede,
ethereal seems real as what was real recedes
and tides of dusk creep slow upon night’s shore.
I, upmounted by your winged fancies flew,
a star-filled flight among the heavens new,
and silvery moon, which never burnt so bright
upon the shimmering waters of this night.
From Latmos’ Isle no stranger urges birthed
into mythic worlds of gods and fairies’ mirth.
When lore and love released their final breath
the heavens dimmed, as if to honor death
and stillness hung thick in English moors,
despair lurked yet close behind dread’s doors.
How long endured the object of your gaze
Fair Brawne, whose aura obsessed days,
did she, as we who grieve now centuries past
shed tear on tear, romance of Autumn last?
Having tasted, what remains on earth to weep?
For those who love, your beauty never sleeps.
Tribute to John Keats 1795-1821
He lies in a paupers grave
Unmarked except for a phase with this quotation
"here lies one whose name was writ in water"
Studied at Guys Hospital
He was an apothecary
His heart wasn't in his work, though
allowed to practise surgery
Romantic poems he did write
His work a constant memory
Was too poor to marry his love
Fanny Brawne was not to be
Keats went to look after his Brother
Who was very ill in Rome
Contracted T B unfortunately
3 years a grave his home
"A thing of beauty is a joy forever"
Are words that he had penned
His critics vicious with their words
Thought to have exasperated the end
Byron wrote about his friend
In his work Don Juan
That the bad reviews shouldn't
Have been the death of him
Come friend, let’s go to where it all began:
Where you eased the heart ache and eased the pain.
The window’s warm light, embering darkness.
The intoxicating sawdust sets the scene:
In succulent reds, butchers dress
With neat laced mince-trays trimmed by hedging green.
Strangers inveigled into its warm light,
All seduced by the still unravishing flesh.
All Senses aroused with intense delight
As dulled minds were made alive and fresh.
Mondays were butchery days, dreaming of distant lands:
Slicing, sawing and cutting endlessly.
A bitter chill froze fingers and clenched hands.
Huge frozen livers numbed limbs tremblingly.
Your verse learned by heart pulsed through each red vein
As winter’s blackness cloaked the shop.
The brisket bones snapped and cracked like dry cane,
You in shadows hid, but whispered at each chop.
As lambs were routinely quartered and hung,
You were the voice that would never cease;
A poetic and melodious tongue
That among the strain and grind was at ease.
As blood red blocks were scrubbed with metal teeth,
My light spirit, you were my scarlet pain.
Buried deep, a green and living wreath,
You were beauty in a joyous refrain.
The steep hill now drags home with black tarmac.
Even here fever and cold pinch and sneeze,
As the path is pebbled by winter rain,
I dream of Grecian art as my balls freeze.