for the real toads on Open Link Monday: John Keats (and a grasshopper)

The prompt for this Open Link Monday finds inspiration from a poet born in October...

John Keats was born 31 October 1795 - a Samhain child, though they wouldn't have called him such.

The Poetry Foundation says this of Keats:

"Keats today is seen as one of the canniest readers, interpreters, questioners, of the "modern" poetic project [...] to create poetry in a world devoid of mythic grandeur, poetry that sought its wonder in the desires and sufferings of the human heart."

At times he seems particularly morbid, but at times I think I like his morbid moments best. 

These, for example:

On Death 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU3XoZbJGSM
http://www.john-keats.com/gedichte/on_death.htm






Ode to a Nightingale

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeFtMBZWrjc
http://englishhistory.net/keats/poetry/odetoanightingale.html






... but as it turns out, he had something of a sense of humor, too:

Give me women, wine and snuff
Until I cry out «hold, enough!»
You may do so sans objection
Till the day of resurrection;
For bless my beard they aye shall be
My beloved Trinity.

http://www.john-keats.com/gedichte/women_wine_and_snuff.htm

Apparently, that poem has been discounted by at least some critics as "not a serious attempt at poety," but I think that's no reason to dismiss a poem. They can't all be serious, because that would be ridiculously tedious.

That's my opinion; your perspective may vary.




I'll tell you this: Perspective is a bitch of a thing.

~

The grasses ceded their whispering afternoon song to the high strains of an unfamiliar wail. A child - perhaps a girl - in a paisley dress had wandered in their garden. The wail was not hers; her song was softer and warbling, and it sputtered beneath the alien sound. Her steps faltered, stilled by the shake rising from knees to lips.
A cloud darkened as it covered the sun, and the wail rose again, tuneless and unfeeling, closer this time to the child's toes.
The child turned and ran.
The grasses bent their heads to the conquering grasshopper.

Written for Open Link Monday, inspired by Keats and Perspective. 
~

Prompt: http://withrealtoads.blogspot.com/2014/10/open-link-monday.html

A reasonably thorough version of John Keats' Bio: http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-keats
Website with Keats' complete list of poetry (I think it's complete, anyway): http://www.john-keats.com/