Keats
Ode on Melancholy
No, no, go not Lethe, neither twist
Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Not suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
Make not your rosary of yew-berries
Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. 10
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all
And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
Or the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. 20
She dwells with Beauty - Beauty that must die
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
and be among her cloudy trophies hung. 30
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Written May or June 1819. Keats was reading The Anatomy of Melancholy by Robert Burton, and he took the general idea of the poem from the section of this book, "Against Melancholy it self", arguing that the man subject to melancholy should make the best use of his moods.
He also seems to echo the statement earlier in Burton that the Romans worshipped the Goddess of Melancholy in the temple of the Goddess of Pleasure (ll. 25-26).
The thought, however, that trials and depressions are a necessary part of the progress of the soul is paramount in Keats at this time.
This ode, which he revised in the autumn (perhaps then cancelling an original first stanza), helped to create the picture of the veiled priestess in The Fall of Hyperion. It also harks back to the Cave of Quietude passage in Endymion.
l. 1. - The abrupt opening is perhaps due to the cancellation of a previous stanza.
l. 6. - "beetle" - death-watch beetle, as in Endymion, IV, 531.
l. 6. - "death-moth" - correctly, death's head moth.
l. 7. - "Psyche" - loved one; here with some suggestion of companion soul.
ll. 21-24. - Compare Ode to a Nightingale, stanza III.
ll. 26-27. - This intensely physical image tends to confirm the stories of Keats's drinking habits, such as that told by the painter B. R. Haydon, who said that Keats "covered his tongue & throat as far as he could reach with cayenne pepper" in order the enjoy the "delicious coolness of claret".
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