Thread: Two parts poetry, one part opium and a dram o' Scotland's finest

This forum was suggested by Gigi in this thread a little while ago. Everyone seemed to think it was a good idea, and we did too!

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All that said, I read this recently:

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

This is the second stanza of Ode to Autumn by Keats (John Keats). As a poem I prefer his Ode on Melancholy, but was attracted to the above while looking into autumnal verse.

Thing is, the stanza I've posted seems to suggest that Autumn (personified) is both a) drunk and b) gaga on opium. Given the personal history of such English Romantics, this isn't all that improbable. Anyway, poetry analysis can be fun, don't say it ain't so.

According to the Longman Anthology I have, Keat's odes are saturated with social and political issues of his day, including the use of morphine as a pain-killer. So the ode doesn't just refer to Autumn as being drunk and stoned, but reflects a larger issue of opiate use in that era. After writing Endymion,Keats apparently believed that poets shouldn't just write escapist poetry, but to "embrace the 'fierce dispute' of life "(Longman), a philosophy I concur with.

Thanks for posting this. Researching a little on Keats has made me want to revisit the Romantics and their works in a big way. There's so much I missed and misunderstood when I was younger.

Do it! Keats was a poetic prodigy -- he died when he was like 23 (from tuberculosis), but his poetry is some of the best of the era. I love it. The other romantics rock, too, like Shelley and Coleridge and (some) Wordsworth.


Not Byron, though. He was just sort of a sex and drug addicted rock star.

Hodge: I believe you can toss Blake in there with those who rock.

Coleridges famous poem Kubla Khan, which begins

In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree :
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round :
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree ;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery. was composed under the influence of morphine, the 'anodyne' referred to in his note below.

"In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in Purchas's Pilgrimage: ``Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.'' The Author continued for about three hours in a profound sleep, at least of the external senses, during which time he has the most vivid confidence, that he could not have composed less than from two to three hundred lines; if that indeed can be called composition in which all the images rose up before him as things, with a parallel production of the correspondent expressions, without any sensation or consciousness of effort. On awakening he appeared to himself to have a distinct recollection of the whole, and taking his pen, ink, and paper, instantly and eagerly wrote down the lines that are here preserved. At this moment he was unfortunately called out by a person on business from Porlock, and detained by him above an hour, and on his return to his room, found, to his no small surprise and mortification, that though he still retained some vague and dim recollection of the general purport of the vision, yet, with the exception of some eight or ten scattered lines and images, all the rest had passed away like the images on the surface of a stream into which a stone has been cast, but, alas! without the after restoration of the latter!"

generations of dope smoking English majors will likely find solace and/or some measure of hope in these words.

TTQ: I too have begun going back to the Romantics, recently with Blake's Marriage of Heaven and Hell. This forum is likely a good place to discuss stuff like that.

Hodge: I believe you can toss Blake in there with those who rock.

Blake is actually my favorite romantic poet. I was just thinking along the lines of the ones who were all buddies and opium addicts (except Wordsworth, which explains why he was just NO FUN).

The Marriage of Heaven and Hell is just effing brilliant -- every one of those devil's proverbs is a little gem that can be taken so many ways. I love Blake. I love him for his poetry. I love him for his art. I love him for his running around naked in his yard with his wife.

or is it that we waste the spring (on taking drugs and drink etc) and with regret look back in autumn?