The Early Poems and “Endymion”

Many of Keats's early poems aspire to the poetry of “health and sociality” encouraged by Hunt, and the poet often plays out this impulse as an act of celebration or as tribute to a friend. ¹ Collectively, the poems from “Imitation of Spenser” through the completion of “Endymion” show an uncommon adaptability of subject and technique, as well as poetic intention. They exude a boyish congeniality and sociability accompanied by a childlike and sometimes childish enthusiasm for the association of learned men, for poetry and art and good company. Yet, circulating somewhere underneath the desire for civil community and lyrical expression is the lingering problem of the nature of poetry, its legitimacy as art, its role in society and usefulness for the individual. These problems typically arise for Keats from his early enchantment with the traditional concept of song and its variety of verse structures. The early imaginative adventures extend into the poet's more serious, though often meandering explorations of poetic function. From beginning to end, Keats's poetry takes part in the Romantic pursuit of aesthetic possibilities for poetry and by extension, a place for art in a more inclusive British culture. This shared desire of poets and artists to assimilate their art into political and cultural discourse even as they resisted such integration, lives in Keats's early poems and letters as personal desire accompanied by multidimensional abstractions regarding poetic function, for example the lively “fellowship with essence” and the process of “Soul-Making.” These conflicting tendencies, to be true to his vision and be relevant to contemporary aims for poetry, reach a balanced maturity in the four major odes, respectively, where two of the central questions posed in the early verse, the “authenticity” of his visions and the concern for the adequacy of his poetic delivery and reception, become consummate problems.