By Monte M. Korn
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teaming brain.
John Keats (1795-1821)
I was born on the Fourth of July, 1919, and recently celebrated my 91st birthday.
Ninety-one years! They flew by so swiftly! In the blink of an eyelash, the years were gone. “Where have all the pretty girls gone? Where have all the pretty girls gone? Where have all the pretty girls gone? Long, long ago, and far, far away...”
In 1945, Dr. Wexler, who wrote the text book on neurology, examined me for several hours and concluded I had Myasthenia Gravis, and perhaps Lou Gehrig’s disease (along with several others). “You may only have a year or so to live, so I suggest that you attempt to live the remaining days of your life to the fullest.” What a wise suggestion. I took Dr. Wexler’s advice and enjoyed a remarkably wonderful and exciting 70 years that followed.
On our first trip to London, my wife, Ellie, and I took the Underground to Hampstead Heath. Emerging from the station, we asked the stationmaster directions to the home of John Keats. He led us outside the station to the main thoroughfare, and pointing the way, said, “It’s not far...only a brisk walk in that direction.”
An hour later, chilled to the bone from an icy head-wind, we made our way on to the pathway of the London home of John Keats.
The Keats home was large and comfortable and a lovely English home to visit with the works of John Keats beautifully displayed.
But we learned one important thing from this experience. If you don’t know where you are going in any city, grab a cab and tell the driver the place where you wish to visit....then, after you have arrived by cab, if you find the distance is not too far to walk for your return trip you walk back...Otherwise, you call a cab!
The term Romanticism did not arise until the Victorian Period. Among the early Romantic poets were Coleridge and Wordsworth.
Coleridge defined good poetry as “the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings” composed by a man “possessed of more than usual organic sensibility (who has) also though long and deeply.” (from Wikipedia)
The dominant theme of Romantic poetry: “the filtering of natural emotion throught the human mind in order to create art, coupled with an awareness of the duality created by such a process.” (Samuel Taylor Coleridge)
The big six Romantic poets were:
William Blake – The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.
William Wordsworth – The Prelude.
Samuel Taylor Coleridge – Rime of the Ancient Mariner.
George Gordon, Lord Byron – Don Juan.
Percy Bysshe Shelly – Prometheus Unbound “Adonais,” “Ode to the West Wind,” and “Ozymandias.”
John Keats – Great odes “Hyperion” and “Endymion.”
When I have fears
that I may cease to be
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,
Before high piled books, in charact’ry,
Hold like rich garners the full-ripen’d grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starr’d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour!
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love!—then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
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Monte M. Korn is an attorney practicing law in West Bloomfield, has been a member of the State Bar of Michigan since 1942, and is a member of the Probate and Elder Law Sections of the State Bar. Monte Korn is the talk show host of “Open Line with Monte Korn” on radio station WNZK am690 every morning at 11 a.m. He can be reached at (248) 933-4334. The material in the above article is the research of Monte M. Korn. The Detroit, Oakland County, and Macomb County Legal Newspapers have no responsibility therein.
