Guide The Midnight Muse (A Myriad of Poetry)

The sedge has withered from the lake, And no birds sing. O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms, So haggard and so woe-begone?

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I see a lily on thy brow, With anguish moist and fever-dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too. I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone; She looked at me as she did love, And made sweet moan. She took me to her Elfin grot, And there she wept and sighed full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four. And this is why I sojourn here, Alone and palely loitering, Though the sedge is withered from the lake, And no birds sing.

At last, the knight is defeated and the lady arises like a phoenix from the ashes with a victorious glow on her cheeks, hair even shinier and more beautiful — she is ready to strike again. Her hands are seductively placed above her head, while the knight is lying dead in the grass, poppies and a few dandelions around him make for a very striking and powerful scene. Edgar Allan Poe died on this day in , oh, it was a sad Sunday in Baltimore, even the ravens cried.

The 7th October was Sunday that year too, what a spooky coincidence! Poe is one of my favourite writers and these days I was intensely immersed in his poems and short-stories, particularly those which deal with his favourite topic: In death, their singular beauty is eternally preserved. Intense feelings arise in my soul this time of the year, and my thoughts wander to Gothic fantasies of lonely moors, dark woods, Gothic castles, Pre-Raphaelites and Bronte sisters.

I sat in silent musing; The soft wind waved my hair; It told me heaven was glorious, And sleeping earth was fair. I needed not its breathing To bring such thoughts to me; But still it whispered lowly, How dark the woods will be! Jean Charles Cazin French, — , Solitude, But do not think its music Has power to reach my mind. The wanderer would not heed me; Its kiss grew warmer still.

A Poem: Autumn Ocean Midnight Muse | Poetry | Hudson Valley | Hudson Valley; Chronogram

Have I not loved thee long? As long as thou, the solemn night, Whose silence wakes my song. Chilean poet Pablo Neruda was born on this day in The last stanza is especially beautiful. Photo by Francesca Woodman — I want you to know one thing. You know how this is: Well, now, if little by little you stop loving me I shall stop loving you little by little. If suddenly you forget me do not look for me, for I shall already have forgotten you. If you think it long and mad, the wind of banners that passes through my life, and you decide to leave me at the shore of the heart where I have roots, remember that on that day, at that hour, I shall lift my arms and my roots will set off to seek another land.

But if each day, each hour, you feel that you are destined for me with implacable sweetness, if each day a flower climbs up to your lips to seek me, ah my love, ah my own, in me all that fire is repeated, in me nothing is extinguished or forgotten, my love feeds on your love, beloved, and as long as you live it will be in your arms without leaving mine. Comments Leave a Comment Categories Literature.

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Oskar Kokoschka, The Bride of the Wind or The Tempest , In nervous, swirling and frantic brushstrokes Kokoschka painted two lovers lying side by side in a sad embrace. You tell me it was not yet three when I was startled awake and sat up terrified and screaming. And what kind of death had frightened me so? And you held me, my love, as I sat up half-asleep, then lay back in silence, wondering what paths and horrors awaited me.

Comments 4 Comments Categories Art. You flee, a fluid parting, Your hair falls in gentle tangles; Your voice-a treacherous tide; Your arms-supple reeds. Long river reeds, their embrace Enlaces, chokes, strangles savagely, Deep in the waves, an agony Extinguished in a night drift. Then, beating her bruised wings thereat, She turns, and looks back from afar. The same on the walls of your German, French and Spanish castles, and Italian collections,.

For know a better, fresher, busier sphere, a wide, untried domain awaits, demands you. Those ancient temples, sculptures classic, could none of them retain her? Nor shades of Virgil and Dante, nor myriad memories, poems, old associations, magnetize and hold on to her? The same undying soul of earth's, activity's, beauty's, heroism's expression,. Out from her evolutions hither come, ended the strata of her former themes,. Silent the broken-lipp'd Sphynx in Egypt, silent all those century- baffling tombs,. Ended for aye the epics of Asia's, Europe's helmeted warriors, ended the primitive call of the muses,.

Ended the stately rhythmus of Una and Oriana, ended the quest of the holy Graal,. The Crusaders' streams of shadowy midnight troops sped with the sunrise,.

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Palmerin, ogre, departed, vanish'd the turrets that Usk from its waters reflected,. Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation;. Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths,. Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly dames,. Making directly for this rendezvous, vigorously clearing a path for herself, striding through the confusion,. Bluff'd not a bit by drain-pipe, gasometers, artificial fertilizers,. To introduce the stranger, what else indeed do I live to chant for?

We do not blame thee elder World, nor really separate ourselves from thee,. Looking back on thee, seeing thee to thy duties, grandeurs, through past ages bending, building,. E'en while I chant I see it rise, I scan and prophesy outside and in,. Somewhere within their walls shall all that forwards perfect human life be started,. In every state of practical, busy movement, the rills of civilization,.

Materials here under your eye shall change their shape as if by magic,. Shall be dried, clean'd, ginn'd, baled, spun into thread and cloth before you,. There may be intelligences or sparks of the divinity in millions but they are not Souls till they acquire identities, till each one is personally itself. A Place where the heart must feel and suffer in a thousand diverse ways! In Hyperion , Apollo likewise takes on his divine selfhood by painfully living through 'dire events', 'agonies' and 'destroyings' Hyperion , III, ll.

The denial in Keats's poem of Psyche's catharsislike rites of passage as they occur in the original story necessarily withholds her every sense of personality. The deconstruction of her identity, marking the process of the poet's masculine domination, has now fully commenced. The poet's possessiveness is further apparent by his act of isolating and hiding Psyche. Though Cupid and Psyche had chosen a secret bower, safely buried in the forest and 'scarce espied' l.

Just as he stumbled accidentally on the scene, so may future potential rivals find out the sacred spot. The ultimate seclusion, therefore, must be realised through an act of internalisation. He opts for a place, heretofore untrodden, and unknown, where his branched thoughts will weave an impenetrable prison. Even in his early youth, Keats interiorised his ideal women in the manner described above: Keats's portrayal of a passive woman meekly waiting in some hidden recesses to satisfy the male's needs appears to be a favourite fantasy of his.

It is a fantasy most cynically exploited in The Eve of St Agnes. With regard to the 'Ode to Psyche', a faint echo of this ideal is found in the parallel image of the 'active' zephyrs lulling to sleep the inert and 'passive' Dryads ll. As far as the complex pattern of vision and non-vision or hiding is concerned which I believe to hold the key to the poem's meaning, it is undeniably so that the poet's passionate feelings for Psyche are themselves aroused by viewing the embracing pair.

The next step for the poet is to appropriate this privileged vision. Before the act of internalisation, however, the external, sensory part of reality needs must be imbued with a quality of the poet's own self. Thus it will become much easier to absorb reality within the mind itself and to capture it within the 'wide hollows of [the] brain' Hyperion , III, l. Rather than a complete self-dispersal in the physical world, the ode demonstrates how nature is seen as an extension of the poet's egocentric and tyrannical personality.

In this respect, everything is looked upon as possessing the same innate quality of vision: Obviously, here has been a poet at work who is continually 'filling some other Body' Letters , I, p. Ironically enough, though, Keats used this phrase to define his much debated idea of the 'cameleon Poet'. But instead of an empathising poet, the ode shows how reality itself is adjusted in order to fit the poet's perception of the material world. In other words, the aeolian harp has turned into a tonometer to which everything else must become attuned.

Does Keats not explicitly state elsewhere that a proper identity is a prerequisite for creative activity? For instance, in his reply to Shelley's invitation to come to Italy, where the milder climate would be beneficial for his health, Keats writes that 'an artist' must 'have "self concentration"' Letters , II, p. His poetry also bears proof of a strong awareness of the relationship between personal independence and creativity.

In Hyperion , Saturn, who is deprived of his previous glory and all power which made up his identity, is faced with the mortifying consequences of his loss of selfhood:.

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I am gone Away from my own bosom: I have left My strong identity, my real self, Somewhere between the throne, and where I sit Here on this spot of earth. Cannot I fashion forth Another world, another universe, To overbear and crumble this to nought? The reader cannot but answer negatively to Saturn's set of agonising questions. The deity may once have held the power to create harmony out of chaos, but these times are now gone with the annihilation of his former self.

It may be meaningful that the 'Ode to Psyche' is the first poem written after the abandonment of Hyperion. Perhaps as a compensation for his own failure in generating a finished work, Keats needed to nerve himself for the exacting task of writing new poetry. In this respect, the Cupid-Psyche myth may have appealed to Keats because it occasioned a candid gesture of self-definition and a search for a well-developed identity.

Hence, in a suddenly regained state of inspiring reassurance, he composes a song for Psyche, his Muse, who will, as from now on, be perfectly obedient to him. The almost obsessive preoccupation with self and identity which resurfaces in the ode can thus be seen as an indispensable self-affirmation necessary for composing poetry. Indeed, in her 'rosy sanctuary' l. For if Psyche allegorically stands for the poet's imagination, the poet will procreate new compositions through the consummation of his love for the goddess cf.

The poet appears here in the guise of the love god Cupid who is described in Apuleius's tale as capable of inflicting similarly oxymoronic ' sweet wounds [by his] piercing darts, by the pleasant heate of his fire' p. In return for the endurance of her imposed passivity, the poet, who is convinced of his own superior sexual prowess, will most generously gratify her with 'soft delight' l.

After all, 'poetry', to quote Sandra M. The lady is [the poet's] creation, or Pygmalion's statue.

The lady is the poem [. Imprisoned in the manacles of the poet's fabrications, Psyche has become no more than a glorified reproductive organ, a divine womb delivering future compositions without respite. The 'wreath'd trellis of [his] working brain' l. In addition, the closely knit pattern of alliterations, assonances and rhymes in the concluding stanza audibly tightens the net around the chased Psyche.

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Unperturbed by his own possessive ploys, the poet now proclaims himself Psyche's assiduous priest, safeguarding the object of his private and idiosyncratic religion in a secret 'temple of Delight' 'Ode on Melancholy', l. One may be reminded here of De Quincey's famous statement in his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater , published two years after the completion of Keats's ode. This time it was no 'hethen [sic] Goddess' Letters , II, p. Like the religious fanatic described in the opening of The Fall of Hyperion , the poet in the 'Ode to Psyche' is to weave himself a private paradise, a pleasure garden or hortus conclusus in which he will be the omnipotent gardener.

In order to gain an even better insight into the poet's unabating attempts to dominate Psyche, it may be worth while at this stage to examine the origin of the word 'temple'. The etymology of temple reads: Thus, apart from a place of worship, a temple can be regarded as a gilded prisonhouse where mankind tries to keep the godhead under strict human control. When Apuleius's Psyche has spent her bridal night in Cupid's 'princely Edifice' and 'place of pleasures', and wakes up the following morning to find herself abandoned, she believes 'that now shee was past all hopes of comfort, in that shee was closed within the walls of a prison deprived of humane conversation' p.

The real nature of the temple-like building appears to have dawned upon her in all its menacing terror. Likewise, the term sanctuary, a word as post-Augustan as Psyche herself, occurs in classical Latin only in the sense of 'the private cabinet of a prince' OED. It is no surprise, then, that the poet in Keats's ode firmly pronounces his intention to build 'a Fane' l. It is only in this protective environment that germination can take place. In Keats's temenos , therefore, the process of the persona's inner growth, strongly dependent on Psyche's presence, or rather, incarceration, is secured against uncontrollable seepage.

The prison walls of Psyche's temple are permeable in one direction only: The mandala denotes and assists exclusive concentration on the centre, the self. This process, needless to say, is the poet's self-realisation at the expense of Psyche's individuality. On the one hand, by assuming the feminine role of a Pythia , the poet has become the mouthpiece of a literally dumb and acquiescent goddess, thereby capable of gross manipulation. Clad with the doctrinal authority of a high priest, on the other hand, the poet succeeds in giving vent to his masculine despotism.

Taken together, both are very effective stratagems to sway the object of his lust, as I will now try to demonstrate. Psyche's subordinate role now comes even more to the fore in the ten-line catalogue of emphatically highlighted negatives referring to the youngest of goddesses ll. With what seems to border on malicious delight, Keats uses almost an entire stanza to inform his audience that Psyche has no temple, altar, or virgin-choir; no lute or incense sweet and was born too late to be venerated in song along with the other Olympian deities.

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In sum, she is denied all the common paraphernalia of worship. She can utter neither any protests nor can she even comply with the poet's desire. She is rudely silenced, incapacitated and thus deprived of all autonomy. All the poet does to enliven 'Olympus' faded hierarchy' l. Psyche remains silently subservient, while the poet usurps the privilege of discourse[. This line has a pivotal role in the ode: Inspired by his tyrannical love, the poet sees and sings , thereby creating not only his but also Psyche's identity.

Indeed, I have already suggested above that Psyche's existence depends exclusively on the persona's act of worship and invocation. Though referring to the unfinished 'Ode to Maia', the following comment by Martin Aske is very well applicable to Psyche's position: This dependence on the poet's invocation bereaves the goddess of any free volition. Just like Adam who acquired supremacy over all living creatures by giving them a name Genesis 2: Is it not very appropriate that all tension of the first stanza is released in the final, almost aggressively short line 'His Psyche true!

In response to the concatenation of negatives of non-being, the poet asserts himself Psyche's grove and shrine, which, in practice, make up the sarcophagus literally 'flesh-eating' coffin of her individuality. The poet indeed is about to absorb her identity completely.