Write a note on the element of sensuousness in the poetry of Keats

Write a note on the element of sensuousness in the poetry of Keats.

Ans.

Keats’ Sensuousness

Keats is sensuous but not licentious. His poetry is sensuous. It abounds in sensuous perceptions but it does not abound in feelings of sensuality. Keats is not abstract, nor is he much intellectual. Keats believed in sensations. Sensations come direct from the perception of objects. So, he exclaimed, “O, for a life of sensations rather than of thought !” Sensations are more important for him than thoughtful or intellectual considerations. He does not trouble to find truth, truth comes to him through beauty and beauty comes to him through the application of five senses. He is great lover of beauty in the concrete. His religion is the adoration of the beautiful. In this respect he is a follower of Spenser. He said, “I have loved the principle of Beauty in all things.” His Endymion begins with the famous line:

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”

Keats’ poetry employs all the five senses. His word-pictures present the remarkable use of the senses of sight, hearing, smell, touch and task.

The Sense of Sight

In his Ode to a Nightingale, the poet presents many beautiful pictures like the ‘purple-stained month’, ‘Queen-Moon clustered around by her starry Fays’, ‘winding mossy-ways’ and ‘the magic casements opening on the foam of perilous seas’. In Ode to Autumn, the poet presents an impressive picture of villages-sitting careless on a granary floor, their hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind, sleeping on a half reaped furrow or cutting off the harvest. The Eve of St. Agnes has a rich feast of visual delight and the readers enjoy it as much as the poet might have done. In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the poet presents a life-like picture of the helpless knight. Like a flower of lily, his forehead is white and his cheeks look like a fading rose. In the same poem, the lady is described as ‘full beautiful, a fairy’s child’, with long hair, light foot, and wild eyes:

“I met a lady in the meads

Full beautiful-a fairy’s child

Her hair was long, her foot was light,

And her eyes were wild.”

Sense of Hearing

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the fairy’s child, sings a fairy song and makes the knight-at-arms sleep and dream horrible dreams:

“For sidelong would she bend, and sing a fairy’s song.”

“And there she lulled me asleep.”

“They cried ‘La belle Dame Sans Merci”.”

“I saw their starved lips in the gloom with horrid warning gaped wide.”

In The Eve of St. Agnes, young Porphyro sings a long-forgotten ditty. In Ode On A Grecian Urn, there is a piper on the Um and he is piping dittes of no tone, but the poet listens to these voices and makes us listen. In Ode to a Nightingale, the sweet intoxicating song satisfies the sense of hearing. In Ode To Autumn, the songs of spring are rejected for the music of Autumn produced by insects, birds and young animals.

Sense of Smell

Keats has a queer power to smell the sweetness of fragrance coming from various flowers and other objects. In Ode to Autumn, the poet refers to the fume of poppies which intoxicates farmers and they sleep in the field:

“Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies.”

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the knight makes garlands for the lady’s head, arms and waist:

“I made a garland for her head,

And bracelets too, and fragrant zone.”

Sense of Taste

In Lamia, the rich banquet room is presented with a richness of taste and flavour. There are cups, goblets and huge vessels and many a table loaded with feast. In Ode To A Nightingale, he describes the intoxicating impact of the sweet music of the nightingale. He talks about drinking of hemlock and opiate to the drains:

“My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains

My senses, as though of hemlock I had drunk,

Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

One minute past, and Lethe wards had sunk.”

In the same poem, he longs for a drought of vintage and a beaker full of warm south.

“O for a draught of vintage!”

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the supernatural lady serves the knight at-arms very delicious food:

“She found me roots of relish sweet;

And honey wild and manna-dew.”

Sense of Touch

In La Belle Dame Sans Merci, the knight finds himself towards the cold hill’s side. He is worried and his forehead shows anguish moist and fever few :

“I see a lily on thy brow

With anguish moist and fever dew.”

In Ode To Autumn, the wind touches the farmer’s hair softly:

“Thy hair soft-lifted by; the winnowing wind.”

The Grecian Urn is an object of art which one would like to touch and examine at close quarters. In Ode To A Nightingale, the poet refers to summer and a draught of vintage:

“O for a draught of vintage! That hath been

Cool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth.”

What a beautiful word-picture the following lines contain about Madeline’s putting off her dress before going to bed for sleeping:

“Of all its wreathed pearls, her hair she frees;

Unclasp her warmed jewels one by one.”