Poems by John Keats - Mini Poem Summaries

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On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
The speaker is taken aback and inspired by the beautiful descriptions in Chapman's work Homer.

 Sleep and Poetry
An appreciation of sleep as a wonderful inspirer, and of poetry as high form of art to which the speaker aspires.

Endymion
Nature is so beautiful as to alleviate depression. Just as nature is grand, so is the prospect of death.

Bright Star, Would I Were as Steadfast as Thou Art
The speaker wants to be like a star not in the sense that it hangs alone in the sky, forced to watch over everything constantly, but in the sense that it is immortal. He wants to spend eternity with his love or else die.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci
A knight is lonely and sad. He tells the narrator he met a maiden, and made love to her. She lulled him asleep and met many other men she bewitched. He woke up and discovered her gone.

Ode to a Nightingale
The speaker is numb, and seeks further numbness in liquor, so that he may forget that beauty fades and love with it. He envies the nightingale that has never known human sorrow. He decides to identify with the bird through poetry, and through its eyes death seems inviting. Then he exits his reverie and becomes forlorn again.

Ode on a Grecian Urn
The speaker wonders what stories adorn a Grecian urn. He celebrates the immortality of the events depicted.

Letter to Benjamin Bailey
Keats tries to pacify Bailey about a quarrel the latter had with Haydon.

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