Day 12 - 30 Days, 30 Readings: John Keats, "To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent"
Channel: David J. Bauman
Date: 2012-04-13

No matter the date, this was posted on the 12th. Unfortunately my dear friend Ann pointed out a glaring typo on the final title that I had to furiously work to fix this morning, as I did not record and post this from my home computer. Sigh.. so this is the edited version. My apologies.

This one goes out to KeatsBabe: http://nowrigglingoutofwriting.wordpress.com/

I won't get into much detail explaining myself here. I was going for a kind of unrehearsed contrast, keeping the city images instead of the pastoral images Keats brings up in the poem itself. I think I like the result, especially in that a great part of the video is my looking down on the flashing of lights that comprise Time Square behind those buildings. 

Philomel is Keats's proper name for the nightingale. It is also the name of a stringed instrument. The latin root words, philo (love) and mel (song, as in melody) work well for the nightengale's apparent love of singing.  In the Ovid Philomela was turned into a nightingale. Pantheon.org provides a succinct overview of the myth if you'd like to learn more, but it has little to do I think with the simple desire of Keats to quietly recoup from the city in a grassy field somewhere, being soothed by nature and the bird's song.

To One who has been Long in City Pent
 John Keats

To one who has been long in city pent,
 'Tis very sweet to look into the fair
 And open face of heaven,--to breathe a prayer
 Full in the smile of the blue firmament.
 Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,
 Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair
 Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair
 And gentle tale of love and languishment?
 Returning home at evening, with an ear
 Catching the notes of Philomel,--an eye
 Watching the sailing cloudlet's bright career,
 He mourns that day so soon has glided by:
 E'en like the passage of an angel's tear
 That falls through the clear ether silently.