Favourite works

[Tina]

Dear All,
May I ask you about your favourite Keats verses,poems and other works.
I understand - it's really difficult to choose from hundreds great works,but I'd like to know about your ones.

[greymouse]

Hi Tina,

My list is probably very unoriginal. Some of my favorites:

Sleep and Poetry
Ode to a Nightingale
To Autumn
Endymion
Hyperion

The short ones are nice because of their concentration and intensity, while the long ones are great because you can get lost in them.

[dks]

For me, it's definitely "Nightingale" and "To Autumn." I'm also partial to "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" and "When I Have Fears."

[Saturn]

On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer.
Ode To A Nightingale
Ode To Autumn.
La Belle Dame Sans Merci.
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to Psyche
Ode on Melancholy
The Eve of St. Agnes
Lamia
Ode ['Bards of Passion and of Mirth']
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
When I have fears that I may cease to be
The Human Seasons
Ode on Indolence
Sonnet (Why did I laugh tonight?)
The Fall of Hyperion

So much good stuff

[dks]

I also love "O Blush Not So"
and "To----"
and "This Living Hand"
and "Eve of St. Agnes"
and "On the Grasshopper and the Cricket"
and "Mrs. Reynold's Cat"
and "Song About Myself"
and "Give me Women Wine and Snuff"
and all the odes
and

pretty much everything he wrote.

[Malia]

The first poem to ever *hit* me with true poetic force was Keats's "To Autumn"--so, I'll certainly have to include that one I also love "Fall of Hyperion" and "Ode to a Nightingale". A few others I especially love are:

"This Living Hand"
"Bright Star"and
"This Mortal Body of A Thousand Days"

[Saturn]

I also love "O Blush Not So"
and "To----"
and "This Living Hand"

and "Mrs. Reynold's Cat"
and "Song About Myself"

How could I have forgotten these

[dks]

There's just no bad Keats poem, folks. None t'all.

[Saturn]

There's just no bad Keats poem, folks. None t'all.

I wouldn't go that far

[dks]

I would and I did.

[Saturn]

This is blind partisanship.

Some of the early stuff is a bit overdone in the romantic mode don't you think?

I'm not so blindly loyal as to say that everything Keats touched turned to gold.

Even his later works were not all as good as he would have wished.

Otho The Great is a prime example of a noble attempt at a different genre that ultimately failed. It has many fine passages but as a play it doesn't work.

By admitting Keats failings we do not by any means diminish his greatness.

His greatness lies in his humanity which involves a certain amount of failure and imperfection.

Aliquando bonus dormitat Homerus

[Even great Homer sometimes sleeps].

[dks]

*hands up in air*

I give up. Ok. Ok. You should know me well enough by now that I am characteristically hyperbolic. I am extreme like that about everything.

I don't use the word 'like' I use 'love'--I use the word 'hate' to describe something I probably only moderately dislike--it's just me, that's all. I'm a bit lost in gray areas like that--I'm able to see a bit better in the black and white, is all.

Yes. There are probably some of his poems that were immature and green, certainly not as good as his chief stuff. Yes. That's true. True on the whole.

[Tina]

Thanks for your answers

[charlotte sometimes]

For me "When I have fears" is unquestionably the best. The last verse: "Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink" makes me have goosebumps all over my body... But there are two more lines that still leave me breathless: "Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,/ And so live ever - or else swoon to death."

[dks]

Ahhh yes--that last line is a meteorite, isn't it??

"Live ever..."

And so it is that Keats always wanted to do just that--and his idea of "living ever" morphed into Fanny when he fell hopelessly in love...I don't mean 'live forever,' mind you, I mean "live ever" just that--like the Nightingale or the scene on the Urn...