Ode to Keats

Linked to “John Keats: The Movie” was “To Autumn,” with 3,000 plus views and a barrage of red, orange and brown autumn imagery. It was recited by Neil Conrich (apparently a very mysterious actor with no biography readily available online). There can even be found poems and videos in response to Keats, such as Glen Fitch’s “To John Keats,” a response to his “To Autumn. It’s short and sweet, and shows that even in today’s modern world, Keats inspires and influences generation upon generation of poets.

TO JOHN KEATS
By Glen Fitch

Dear priest and prophet,

cantor of sweet time,

Grand dreamer

of delicious lore and fame,

What e'er you viewed

that spirit you became

To sing its joy and sorrow

in rich rhyme.

And when the frenzy

wrought a poem sublime

Each line reveals

the soul you sought to claim.

But now unto Apollo

songs you frame.

For us your hymn

fell silent ere its prime.

But in the sacred bower

of your mind,

Before the timeless font

of pleasure-pain

Will you not say a prayer

of soft design

To make his Muses

mold me in your kind

And by your saintly chants

have me ordained,

If unsung rhymes

in Faerielande remain?

Keats, in the myriad portraits of him, always seems to be looking into the distance, out a window, at some far off tree or bird soaring further and further away.

Yet, for the students of this generation, Keats is right beside. We are staring out that same window, trying to see what he sees, or trying to find something different with the same gaze.

I wonder if he ever got bored,

Sitting for all those portraits?