by Keats · Cluster: Transience · Decay · Carpe Diem
Abstract
A sonnet allegorizing the four ages of human life as the four seasons of the mind, ending in a wintry decline that is the price of mortal nature. Its themes are transience, mortality, and the seasons of the soul.
Connections
Topoi: Seven Ages of Man Motifs: Seasons, Mutability, Winter Themes & Concepts: Transience, Mortality, Self-Knowledge Forms & Genres: Sonnet
Testo integrale / Full text
Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
There are four seasons in the mind of man:
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
Spring’s honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look 10
On mists in idleness - to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.