Shakespeare’s Cleopatra called it her “salad days” -- those bygone days when the skies seemed to be bluer, the air fresher, and there was not even the suspicion that old age could ever happen to you. I recall a professor I had in graduate school reflecting on those lines. He took long pauses. The rest of the narrative arc in the play simply fell to the wayside. For a moment, it was as if he and Cleopatra were both rapt in an undeniable reality of being young – that it is fleeting and precious.
In his own way, Romantic poet John Keats echoes this sentiment, though I hasten to say that his contribution was profoundly ironic as it was penned when the poet was merely twenty-three years old, two years before his untimely death from tuberculosis. He was a youth writing about youth, in other words. If there was any hint of nostalgia then we can be sure that it was borne out of someone supremely, perhaps painfully aware of the passing of time – that the sands in the hourglass are always falling, like it or not, recognize it or not. Keats certainly understood this truth. In his classic poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats seems to meditate on the tension we all hold inside: life, death, the haze of a bliss we once knew, another haze of an end we all must face. He writes,
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Here, we see two lovers in rapturous anticipation. Two lovers who will never grow old, always be fair, forever exist in an ecstasy of passion. Sensual music, Green, green boughs. Pounding, thumping hearts. All a scene painted upon an urn of all things. A vessel containing ashes of the dead. The irony could not be sadder. Keats punctuates this poem by underscoring the point that the scenes like those depicted on the urn are universal. In one way or another, we all experience them – delight in youthful splurges, revel in happy impulses – but on a dime, it seems, we all too quickly begin to amass the days and weeks, months and years that put cruel distance between those times and us, causing confusion and, for many, no small measure of melancholy. What hope we can cling to, Keats offers in the end. He concludes,
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
More will come. Others will experience the same sensation of growing up, growing old, and growing distant, but the message on the urn will remain the same: we are closest to what is true and beautiful when we are young. This, of course, is the Romantic thesis. Wordsworth championed this. As did Coleridge and Blake. I have said as much in earlier episodes. “We are trailing clouds of glory” when we are born. We are closest to God. The Divine. Perfection. And when we age, we gradually step away from that ideal. As such, the Romantic cause remains hopeless if and only if the gaze remains in the past. To be sure, circumnavigating Keats’ conclusion means understanding time differently altogether. Perhaps, dear listener, Keats himself gives us an out in the final line” That is all ye know on earth.” He specifies a place. Earth. What about heaven? The rules certainly change there. Did he forget that the contents of the urn will be redeemed? It is hard to say. Had there been more days and weeks, months and years for the young Keats, perhaps he would have known to make this assertion on his own.
