Shakespeare’s “The Seven Ages of Man” and John Keats’s “The Human Seasons”: A Study in Contrast

Shakespeare’s “The Seven Ages of Man”
and John Keats’s “The Human Seasons”
A Study in Contrast

The Human Seasons

“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 high
Is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness – to let fair things
Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook,
He has his winter too of pile misfeature,
Or else he would forgo his mortal nature.

This simple sonnet of Keats is a much misunderstood poem. We have long been accustomed to associate “spring” and “ winter” with youth and old age respectively. Hence the unwary reader tends to conclude that the poet is speaking about four stages in human life. The title “The Human Seasons” also adds strength to this feeling. But this is not so. In this poem Keats is speaking about four seasons in “man’s mind”. There is no correspondence between these four mental seasons and the natural transitions from youth to manhood from manhood to middle age and then to old age. Keats never bothered much about the external or the physical. He lived in the mind. “Oh, for a life of sensations!” he says.

In Keats “imagination” occupies the central place. Imagina­tion is the key to his poetry as well as to his existence. In a letter to Benjamin Bailey (Nov. 22, 1817) Keats wrote, “I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart’s affections and the truth of imagination. What the Imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth – whether it existed before or not.”

In As You Like It the cynical lord Jacques attending on the senior Duke, in the forest of Arden, gives us his cynical and humorous account of man’s life. We may take it that Shakespeare himself, with his tongue in his cheek, subscribes to the seven-stage division of man’s life. According to him every (English) man passes through seven stages known as the seven Ages of man – the infant, the school boy, the lover, the soldier, the magistrate, the old man, and the child (a second time). Herein we see seven solid pictures, clearly drawn, neatly framed and hung one by the side of the other – the infant, crying helplessly in the nurse’s arms cognizing only hunger and sleep; the unwilling school boy with a bright face and a snail’s pace; the lover, sighing like a furnace; the soldier seeking the bubble reputation in a canon’s mouth; the wise judge, his belly lined with the fattened cock (accepted as a bribe) ; the old man with his spectacles on nose; and lastly the very old man suffering his second childhood “sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything” that makes life worth living. All these are familiar pictures, humorously, yet sadly, recording procession of humanity from the cradle to the grave, showing us glimpses of the “strange and eventful history” of man to quote Shakespeare himself.

Although done in a lighter vein, the master touch is there in the photograghic representation of the several stages in an ordinary man’s life. No body can dream of bettering it. Keats is no fool to imitate Shakespeare. His poetic genius is acknow­ledged as equal to that of the great Elizabethan. So naturally, befitting his talents and temperament Keats chose to describe the intellectual or mental existence of man, in contradistinction to his physical or outer life. Interestingly Keats has chosen as his vehicle the Shakespearean sonnet and not the pistachion of which he is so fond.

The mind of man, according to the poet keats has four different stages. When he says “man,” he means a “poet”. It could be an artist, a thinker, a writer, or a philosopher. The mind of man has four seasons – Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter. With powerful imagery, of which Keats only is capable, he describes these seasons. It is spring when the poet’s clear and strong fancy enjoys, takes in or absorbs all the beauty within sight, with ease. He dares to fly high on the wings of poetry. Hence it is the spring or the youth of the imagination. Just as a strong young man can take in the richness of life around him effortlessly and joyfully, so also the youthful imagination of the poet takes daring flights and bodies forth shapes of things unknown. We may call this “spring”, “a spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions”, borrowing Wordsworth’s phrase. It is rich, vital and spontaneous.

The poet’s mind has its Summer, when it is richly stored and the poet sits to recollect. He loves to ruminate. He is nearest unto heaven recollecting “Chewing the honied cud of youthful thought.” He lives in a dream world reliving his gathered experiences and basking in the sunshine of his youthful poetic activity, enjoying the joy of poetic creation and entertaining bright visions for the future. This stage can be described as “Emotion recollected in tranquillity”, often leading to creativity; just as the chewed cud gets digested and goes into the making of milk for young ones!

Next comes Autumn. To paraphrase the line “his soul has quiet coves in its Autumn” (8-9). Keats describes the season elsewhere as “the season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”. The mists are here too and the contentment resulting from mellowness and fruition. Like an eagle in a mountain aerie overlooking the bay, the poet’s mind ceases her flights, furis her wings close to her body and watches in idleness. Many fair things are allowed to pass before the poets eye “ungrasped”, like our threshold brook. A sort of mist or haze envelops everything. An idleness grips his soul and there is no poetic activity or further creation. There is no striving, just serenity, an idle quietness.

The poet’s mind has its winter of “pale misfeature”. Keats does not elaborate. He tantalizes us with the last line “or else he would forgo his mortal nature.” This winter may be construed as the weakened mental activity which often results in bloodless verse, incoherent or obscure poetry or foolish and senile utterances.

“The Human Seasons” is pregnant with suggestive imagery and symbolic overtones. The poet is concerned with the changing seasons in the mental life of an Imaginative artist, but not with the passing years of man. By calling them “seasons” the poet implies recurrence of these stages in a man’s life. The duration of each season is not specific. Depending on the movement of life around, its speed and intensity, its influence on the artist’s mind varies. As such, he may experience all the four seasons in a single day. On the other hand, an artist may be lucky enough to have his “spring” – intense, youthful and fruitful mental activity – for a very long time, as in the case of R. K. Narayan (who has published his A Tiger for Malgudi in his 78th year) and Thornton Wilder who wrote a youthful and hopeful book (Theophilus North) in his 73rd year. For many poets it is mostly “autumn” or “winter”. The first gush of poetic flow having spent itself they either idle away the time or repeat themselves to no purpose. Wordsworth wrote his best poetry before he was thirty and continued to live on upto eighty, “autumn” and winter visiting him alternately. John Keats himself knew only spring and summer. Sometimes these mental seasons “may” coincide with four phases in the growing man from youth to old age.

In both the poems under consideration the tone is jovial and light-hearted. Shakespeare’s poem has satirical stings, but Keats’s poem is a realistic description. The former describes outer or external life and the latter the inner life of man. The last lines of both the poems are significant Shakespeare ends on a note of irony, when he speaks about “this strange eventful history of man.” Keats’s attitude is that of realistic, somewhat good-humoured acceptance of an unavoidable fact – the winter of “pale misfeature”.