Endymion: A Poetic Romance

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1818

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Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Symbols & Motifs

The Moon

The moon, as a celestial object and embodied as a woman, symbolizes beauty. In the first stanzas, Keats lists things of beauty that inspire joy, including “the sun, the moon” (Line 13). The moon is also associated with poetry (poesy), such as in the second stanza—“so does the moon, / The passion poesy” (Lines 28-29)—and in Stanza 16: “who cons / Sweet poesy by moonlight” (Lines 368-69). Additionally, the moon motif develops the theme about the nature of dreams. The speaker describes the dreams that occur during sleep as having “Echoing grottos, full of tumbling waves, / And moonlight; aye, to all the mazy world / Of silvery enchantment!” (Lines 459-461). The moon is associated with the color and metal silver, as well as magic. The main example of the moon’s “enchantment,” or magic, in the poem is her ability to become embodied as a woman in Stanza 22.

The moon is connected with water (another important symbol in the poem). Another example is when Endymion first sees the moon, as a celestial object, in his vision. He says, “The loveliest moon, that ever silver’d o’er / A shell for Neptune’s goblet” (Lines 592-93). Neptune is the god of the sea, and the moon shines over the sea. When the moon reappears as a woman, she continues to be associated with water. Endymion compares her feet to the feet of “sea-born Venus, when she rose / From out her cradle shell” (Lines 626-27). Seashells surround both of the moon’s forms in his vision.

Water

While all the elements appear in Endymion, water is the most prevalent. Water, like the moon, has several symbolic associations. Water connects the poet with his characters. In Stanza 3, Keats says, “I’ll smoothly steer / My little boat, for many quiet hours, / With streams that deepen freshly into bowers” (Lines 46-48). This passage is part of his description of how he is writing the poem out in the countryside. Piloting the boat can be read literally and/or as a symbol for writing poetry. This boat is echoed in the shallop, or little boat, that Peona and Endymion ride at the end of the poem. The last line is: “They stept into the boat, and launch’d from land” (Line 993), signifying the importance of water at the end of Book 1. Endymion, like Keats, uses boat imagery when telling Peona about his waking experiences of seeing and hearing the goddess. He says, “No merely slumberous phantasm, could unlace / The stubborn canvas for my voyage prepar’d— / Though now ‘tis tatter’d; leaving my bark bar’d” (Lines 772-74). The canvas describes symbolic sails, and a bark is a type of boat.

Additionally, Keats petitions his muse to “let a portion of ethereal dew / Fall on my head” (Lines 131-32). This falling dew is a symbol of the muse aiding him in writing. Later in the poem, dew reappears to save Endymion from plunging head-first into a well after seeing the moon goddess’s face in the water. He says,

There came upon my face, in plenteous showers,

Dew-drops, and dewy buds, and leaves, and flowers,

Wrapping all objects from my smothered sight,

Bathing my spirit in a new delight (Lines 900-03).

This dew saves his life, he tells Peona, symbolizing some sort of divine intervention.

Water is also a symbol of divine blessings in the priest’s prayer. He says, “Have not rains / Green’d over April’s lap?” (Line 216-17). This is part of the shepherd community’s ritual to Pan at the altar on the mountaintop. In the hymn to Pan, he is described as “a symbol of immensity / A firmament reflected in a sea; / An element filling the space between” (Lines 299-301). Water is part of Pan’s symbology as a divine being of liminal (in-between) spaces, both in water and the heavens. Water is frequently associated with space in the poem. For instance, when Endymion rides with the moon goddess through space, he compares it to someone “Who dives three fathoms where the waters run / Gurgling in beds of coral” (Lines 639-40).

Bowers and Grottos

The element of earth, in the form of trees and bowers, especially those that meet the water (like grottos and caves), is part of the framework of Endymion. In the first stanza, Keats describes how beauty “will keep / A bower quiet for us” (Lines 3-4). This symbolizes a feeling of safety and comfort. Close to halfway through the poem, Peona takes Endymion to a “bowery island” (Line 428) and lays him in “her favourite bower’s quiet shade” (Line 437). The repeated diction of “quiet” emphasizes the peacefulness of the bower, carrying over from the metaphoric bower of emotion instilled by beauty to a literal location that characters travel to. The bower, as a location, has healing properties—Endymion comes out of his trance here. He also confesses his vision of the moon goddess to Peona here, and they debate the nature of dreams and the importance of love here. They remain in the bower for almost half of Book 1, only leaving in the final stanza.

Grottos and caves are overt symbols of dreams and, more subtly, feminine sexuality. Sleep, according to the speaker, contains landscapes with “Fountains grotesque, new trees, bespangled caves, / Echoing grottos” (Lines 458-59). This is the kind of sleep that revives Endymion in the bower—these are the healing dream locations. Endymion also visits a grotto while he is awake. He walks along a brook until he reaches a cave where “Overhead / Hung a lush scene of drooping weeds, and spread / Thick, as to curtain up some wood-nymph’s home” (Lines 940-42). This has a vaginal feel, due to the foliage surrounding the cave’s opening and the female sexuality exhibited by nymphs in mythology. Here, in this “grot” (Line 944), Endymion hears the voice of the moon goddess. She pursues him, so the place symbolizes not only female sexuality, but aggressive female sexuality.