John Keats
...of Keats has been called an assortment of things from a child full of imagination to a skillful genius. Through Keats poetry the reader will be able to see him develop into a man with his own outspoken beliefs. Throughout Keats' poetry he exemplifies many poetic elements from allegory to stanza couplets. In Keats's poems, The Eve of St. Agnes, First Looking into Chapman's Homer, and On the Sonnet the two major elements in these poems are form and mood.
In the poem, The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats shows diversity of style by writing a romantic poem. The stanza form of this poem was Spenserian. This is a nine-line form with the first eight lines in iambic character and the last line in iambic hexameter. (Allan Danzing) By example, in this stanza, Keats uses this unique form to express the love between Madeline and Porphyro.
His prayer he saith, this patient, holy man;
Then takes his lamp, and riseth from his knees,
And back returneth, meager, barefoot, wan,
Along the chapel aisle by slow degrees:
The sculptured dead, on each side, seem to freeze,
Imprisoned in black, purgatorial rails;
Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat' ries,
He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails
To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails
(stanza 2)
The poem shows the contrast between reality vs. dream. In the poem Keats describes how Madeline was surprised to see Porphyro beside her bed, because she was just dreaming of him. In Madeline's dream, Porphyro was perfect. She imagined him the way she wanted him to be. So the mood at the beginning of the poem expresses happiness about the joy of love.
So, purposing each moment to retire,
She linger'd still. Meantime, across the moors,
Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
For Madeline. Beside the portal doors,
Buttress'd from moonlight, stands he, and implores
All saints to give him sight of Madeline,...
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