Keats knows his business. If the primary goal of poetry is to strike to the heart of things succinctly, Keats nails it. This poem, for instance, tells a complete story in three stanzas of eight lines each. He wastes nothing, but doesn’t sound sparse. He maintains a sumptuous, bittersweet atmosphere without bloating, and without sounding snooty. These few, achingly simple lines at the end are especially beautiful:
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done,
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.
The last line of the poem has inspired several other works; most notably: one of Ray Bradbury’s short story collections, which itself inspired an album by Devendra Banhart. The more I read, the more I see chains—or, more accurately, webs—of influence form and jump from artist to artist, even and sometimes especially across media.
Read the full text of the poem; it’s short. I quoted almost a third of it.
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