On The Sea By John Keats - A Summary

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ON THE SEA – By John Keats – A SUMMARY The Poem It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell, When last the winds of heaven were unbound. O ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; O ye! whose ears are dinn'd with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody, -- Sit ye near some old cavern's mouth, and brood Until ye start, as if the sea-nymphs quired! Aug 1817. In all ages and in all cultures, poets have been fascinated and inspired by the stupendous enormity of Nature’s creations and phenomena. A vast starlit sky, the mighty mountains, a raging storm – all these have featured again and again in a large number of varied poems. However, among various natural objects, perhaps the sea has evoked numerous feelings in poets like nothing else and they have recorded those feelings in many beautiful poems. “On the sea” by John Keats is one such poem. One of the hallmarks of any timeless literary creation – particularly the everlasting poems – is its capability to convey much deeper meaning to the readers than its outward narrative form. Quite often, a poem would reveal glimpses of its profound significance at different levels on reading over and over again. On the sea, at one level, offers many enchanting visuals and imagery. In the first few lines, our mind is filled with the different contrasting natures of the sea – the “eternal whispering around desolate shores” makes us wonder about the intransience of the sea, about those primeval times when there was no life on this planet but the waves of the sea, even then, were gently but relentlessly
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