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John KeatsA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Composed in the same letter to his sister Fanny as “Meg Merrilies,” “There was a naughty boy” is a charming self-caricature that paints Keats as a rebellious boy packing up for adventure in Scotland (as the real Keats did, against his doctor’s orders). It complements “Meg” in illustrating the poet’s preoccupation in this period with his wild childhood and with an older, kindly wise woman: perhaps his beloved grandmother, who might feature in the poem as “Granny-good.”
Inspired heavily by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Hyperion and its subsequent revision, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, is Keats’s unfinished epic poem on an episode from Greco-Roman myth, the fall of the Titans. Some of the older female characters bear a passing resemblance to Meg in their sympathetic natures and imposing physicality (e.g., Mnemosyne, Moneta).
Another ballad from the Romantic period, Robert Burn’s “Highland Mary” uses the same poetic structure, meter, and rhythm as “Meg Merrilies.” It also features a highland woman and pristine natural scenery, but rather than centering on freedom, Burns’ poem laments his long-lost love, another popular subject for the Romantic poets.
By John Keats
Endymion
Endymion: A Poetic Romance
John Keats
La Belle Dame sans Merci
La Belle Dame sans Merci
John Keats
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
Ode on Melancholy
Ode on Melancholy
John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to a Nightingale
John Keats
Ode to Psyche
Ode to Psyche
John Keats
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer
John Keats
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
On Seeing the Elgin Marbles
John Keats
The Eve of St. Agnes
The Eve of St. Agnes
John Keats
To Autumn
To Autumn
John Keats
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
John Keats