Ode for John Keats
i.
I heard your Nightingale today, broadcast
Over the radio, and felt again
That sympathy
With your romantic mood
Of melancholic loss
That always floods my senses through
The exquisite emotions roused
By your empathic words –
Such synthesis of apt, delightful phrase
And sensitive, imaginative thought –
Which conjure up the magic in your verse
And bring tears to my eyes.
ii.
You were not born for death, immortal bard;
(Though thoughtless generations
Pass you by
Absorbed in crass, material concerns:
Or critics, like forensic scientists,
Dissect your lines –
As if they were cadaveric remains
Cold in a morgue –
In search of meanings which
You never did intend);
Instead, your life was meant
To earn Eternity’s
Unceasing praise
In company with Shakespeare who alone,
In my assessment, overtops your art.
iii.
Had you but lived with us as long as he,
(Though even his was far too brief a stay!),
You might have crowned his peerless eloquence
With more mature constructions
Of your own;
For your evocative young genius –
Frozen by fate at your untimely passing,
As a frost in June
Curtails the budding glories
Of high Summer’s blooms –
Promised a greater grandeur yet.
iv.
Each time I read or hear your charming lines
I am reminded of the highest hopes
Foreshadowed in your works
But blighted by consumptive tuberucles;
And of those other poets who have died
In prematurity –
From sickness or some hateful tyrant’s fears –
Their promise unfulfilled, like yours,
Although their dreams
Still live in other minds.
v.
Stirred by the radio or printed page,
My eyes always betray emotions’ force
When, in my mind,
Your voice’s echo sounds as though it were
The fading anthem of your Nightingale
Receding to some distant vale
On viewless wings;
Though still she sings!.
