Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl
Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl - meaning Summary
Oblivion Cannot Erase Love
Keats presents a speaker who seeks oblivion to escape obsessive love but finds memory inescapable. He asks for a draught to banish the beloved, invoking Lethe and classical imagery, yet repeatedly admits the beloved’s face, eyes, and presence remain vividly imprinted. The poem contrasts desire and despair, suggesting that absence intensifies the beloved into an eternal, idealized memory that both torments and sanctifies the speaker.
Read Complete AnalysesFill for me a brimming bowl And in it let me drown my soul: But put therein some drug, designed To Banish Women from my mind: For I want not the stream inspiring That fills the mind with--fond desiring, But I want as deep a draught As e'er from Lethe's wave was quaff'd; From my despairing heart to charm The Image of the fairest form That e'er my reveling eyes beheld, That e'er my wandering fancy spell'd. In vain! away I cannot chace The melting softness of that face, The beaminess of those bright eyes, That breast--earth's only Paradise. My sight will never more be blest; For all I see has lost its zest: Nor with delight can I explore, The Classic page, or Muse's lore. Had she but known how beat my heart, And with one smile reliev'd its smart I should have felt a sweet relief, I should have felt ``the joy of grief.'' Yet as the Tuscan mid the snow Of Lapland dreams on sweet Arno, Even so for ever shall she be The Halo of my Memory.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.