The Grave of Keats
The Grave of Keats - meaning Summary
Elegy for a Fallen Poet
Wilde’s poem mourns John Keats as a young, wrongly treated genius taken before his prime. It frames Keats as a martyr whose beauty and talent outlived worldly injustice. Rather than dark funerary symbols, the poem imagines gentle violets and lasting memory, asserting that Keats’s name, though said to be "writ in water," will endure through tears and devotion. The tone is elegiac and celebratory of artistic legacy.
Read Complete AnalysesRID of the world's injustice, and his pain, He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue: Taken from life when life and love were new The youngest of the martyrs here is lain, Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain. No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew, But gentle violets weeping with the dew Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain. O proudest heart that broke for misery! O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene! O poet-painter of our English Land! Thy name was writ in water----it shall stand: And tears like mine will keep thy memory green, As Isabella did her Basil-tree.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.