Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Keats

Keats - meaning Summary

Mourning a Quenched Promise

Longfellow's 'Keats' is a short elegy mourning John Keats's early death and the loss of his poetic promise. Using pastoral and nocturnal imagery—a sleeping Endymion, a shattered shepherd's pipe, and the inscription "writ in water"—the speaker rejects the notion that Keats' reward matched his gifts. The poem frames Keats as a quenched flame and broken reed, emphasizing wasted potential and Longfellow's admiration for the late Romantic poet.

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The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep; The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told! The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold To the red rising moon, and loud and deep The nightingale is singing from the steep; It is midsummer, but the air is cold; Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep. Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white, On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name Was writ in water." And was this the meed Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write: "The smoking flax before it burst to flame Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

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