🌊To The Nile by John Keats (Theme Nature)🌊

Son of the old Moon-mountainous African!

Chief of the Pyramid and Crocodile!

We call thee fruitful, and that very while,

A desert fills our seeing's inward span;

Nurse of swart nations since the world began,

Art thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile

Such men to honor thee, who, worn with toil,

Rest for a space "twixt Cairo and Decan?

O may the dark fancies err! They surely do:

"Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste

Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew

Green rushes like our rivers, and dost taste

The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,

And to the sea as happily dost haste.

Note on the poet.

🌄 John Keats was born on October 31, 1795, on the northern outskirts of London.

🌄 Keats decided to become a doctor and, in 1811, when he reached the age of sixteen, he was apprenticed to a Dr. Hammond and matriculated at Guy's Hospital for six months.

🌄 Keats met the poet Leigh Hunt, who highly admired the poetry Keats had written. His friendship with Hunt was to have an important effect on his life. Hunt deepened his interest in poetry and made him a liberal in politics.

🌄 The difference is that Keats love for the nature is purely sensuous and he loves the beautiful sights and scenes of the nature for their own sake, while other romantic see in the nature a deep meaning ethical, moral or spiritual. He died of consumption at the age of twenty-six.

Background of the poem

It is interesting that the poem "To the Nile" was a result of a 15 minute sonnet writing contest with the subject restricted to The Nile. Keats took part in this contest with Percy Shelley and Leigh Hunt. The three poets gathered at Leigh Hunts Hampstead cottage for writing poems on the subject of the Nile. Keats sonnet "To the Nile" is Petrarchan and it was published in the Plymouth and Devon shire Weekly Journals on July 19, 1833.

Analysis of the lines

It is obvious that "To the Nile" is a sonnet. The word sonnet is derived from the Italian word "Soneto". It means a small or little song Lyric. In poetry, a sonnet has fourteen lines and it is written in limbic pentameter. Each line has 10 syllables. It has a specific rhyme scheme and a "Volta" or a specific turn.

Poetic techniques.

✨ Form and structure

✨ Form of an ode

✨ Personification

✨ Simile

✨ Imagery

✨ Use of language

Themes of the Poem.

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe. Being romantic poet, Keats had a keen interest in nature. "Ode to Nightingale" is one of the best romantic poems on the nature written by Keats. The poem "To the Nile" is also like an ode because he addresses the river Nile the same way in which he addresses the bird in Nightingale.