A Brighter Word Than Bright: Keats at Work

Sacred & Profane

12 Sacred & Profane Sometimes I think a poetic presses down upon the poet’s mind as does a seal upon the soft wax that closes a letter. Sometimes I think it takes a lifetime for the seal to press down, and with every poem, year after year, the impression presses deeper. The early poems in a poet’s life show the shallow edges of a concern that in the last poems will be deeply marked. That poetic seal promises other meanings. The image on the seal closes from view those words meant only for the recipient ’s eyes.The image faces all who hold the letter, a public value. But the image keeps secret other words, a sacred value. It is worth noting that the waxen image must be broken for the letter to be read. Keats writes two poems to his brother George, one a sonnet and oneof much greater length. In both, the young poet expresses—almost naively, so strenuous is their enthusiasm —certain poetic ideals that will only deepen over the course of the coming years. In the sonnet, he writes: E’en now, dear George, while this for you I write, Cynthia is from her silken curtains peeping So scantly, that it seems her bridal night, And she her half-­ discover’d revels keeping. But what, without the social thought of thee, Would be the wonders of the sky and sea?8 Keats wants his brother to know that he has witnessed the goddess even as she discovers the secret of her bridal night. To interpret the image simply as a metaphor of romantic 13 1816 fancy is to dismiss its devotion to imagination’s fevered transport. Keats can see, he says, through those veils that keep the moon merely the moon. His work vaults him into sacred glimpses, and the work of the poem is to show how the sacred might show itself forth within the confines of the profane world, how the moon can be moon and Cynthia at once. We see the sacred discovering a secret, Cynthia’s “half-­ discover’d revels” of her bridal night. It is a strange thing to suggest, that there is that which the goddess must herself discover—it is as if in her peering out the curtains, the moon peering out the scant clouds, she steps out of her own godly capacity, omniscience gently dropped away as a wedding dress drops away, to discover what can be found in no other way: the revels of the bridal chamber. It seems past human nature to turn one’s eyes away just as the goddess appears, but Keats does. He says there are no “wonders of the sky and sea” without the “social thought” of his brother. The couplet values the profane, and so the sacred retreats, and the poem ends. But such dichotomy dissatisfies reader and poet both. In the longer poem, Keats returns to similar imagery to speak more confoundingly of his aspiration (an aspiration perhaps only discovered by the writing of the poem that expresses it, and so explanatory of the need to unfold the sonnet’s brevity into the later poem’s extent): The sage will mingle with each moral theme My happy thoughts sententious; he will teem With lofty periods when my verses fire him, And then I’ll stoop from heaven to inspire him. Lays have I left of such a dear delight That maids will sing them on their bridal night.9 Keats has exchanged places with the moon. Now he is at height, the atmosphere ethereal his verse has cast him up to, and his own song descends to give melody and words to 14 1816 maidens on their wedding night.The conditions of the sonnet find themselves reversed, and no longer is Keats choosing the social over the sacred. He is seeking instead a way to intertwine opposed realities. Cynthia’s wedding night and the earthly maiden’s similar revels would all sing the same song. It is the very song that ties them together. ...