February 23 2018<\/p>\n
Word of the Day: vacillate<\/p>\n
Vacillate<\/em>: 1. to waver in mind or opinion; be indecisive or irresolute; 2. to sway unsteadily; waver; totter; stagger; 3. to oscillate or fluctuate. I think the first definition defines the way we use the word most often about people. The second definition, which seems to regard a person\u2019s physicality, is less frequent. And the third definition defines the word as we use it about inanimate objects, I think. And yet the second definition is the one that appears in English first, in the 1590s. The first definition first appears in the 1620s.<\/p>\n It comes from Latin vacillatus<\/em>, past participle of vacillare<\/em> “sway to and fro; hesitate,” according to etymonline.com. The Latin word also has the sense, or the connotation, of \u201cuntrustworthy.\u201d<\/p>\n February 23 is the day we commemorate the death of John Keats, the English Romantic poet who died at the age of 25.<\/p>\n Keats was born to a working-class couple, the oldest of four. He was able to go to school, but not to the really good schools. His father died when Keats was just eight, and his mother remarried, badly, almost immediately. His mother then died of tuberculosis when Keats was fourteen, and Keats was in the care of his grandmother. Later the same year, he was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary named Thomas Hammond, with whom he stayed for about 5 years. He enrolled at Guy\u2019s Hospital as a student, but his ambition to write poetry led him away from a medical career. He had two bequests available to him, one from a grandfather and one from his mother, but he was unaware of these because the family lawyer did not say anything.<\/p>\n He made several influential friends, including Leigh Hunt, who helped his career along. He, along with his brothers George and Tom, moved from London to Hampstead, where John and George nursed Tom during his fight with tuberculosis. In June of 1818, George and his wife left England for America, where they lived until their deaths, of tuberculosis, until 1841. John continued to care for Tom until Tom\u2019s death in December of 1818.<\/p>\n In the winter of 1818-19, Keats moved into Wentworth Place in Hampstead. He heard a lecture by William Hazlitt about poetry and poets, and he was inspired by meeting William Wordsworth. In the fall of 1818, he had met Fanny Brawne, and in April of 1819 she and her mother moved near Wentworth; the relationship, the love between the two, flourished. However, Keats knew that, as a struggling poet, he could never marry Fanny.<\/p>\n But 1819 saw Keats produce some of the greatest poetry ever written. The time is referred to by scholars as Keats\u2019s annus mirabilis<\/u>, his wonderful year. During this wonderful year Keats wrote five of his six great odes: “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode on Indolence.” In addition, he wrote \u201cThe Eve of St. Agnes\u201d and \u201cLa Belle Dame sans Merci,\u201d among other works.<\/p>\n In 1820, having been diagnosed with the same disease that had killed his mother and brother, and which would later kill his other brother and his sister-in-law, Keats was advised to leave England for Italy, for his health. He had medical care from two friends in Rome, care which probably brought on his death more quickly. And in the spring of 1821, he died and was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome. On his tombstone were engraved these words:<\/p>\n This Grave \/ contains all that was Mortal \/ of a \/ Young English Poet \/ Who \/ on his Death Bed, in the Bitterness of his Heart \/ at the Malicious Power of his Enemies \/ Desired \/ these Words to be \/ engraven on his Tomb Stone: \/ Here lies One \/ Whose Name was writ in Water.<\/strong><\/em> 24 February 1821<\/p>\n Can you sense the vacillation in his mind?<\/p>\n The image is the Portrait of John Keats by William Hilton. It can be found in the National Portrait Gallery, London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Paul Schleifer February 23 2018 Word of the Day: vacillate Vacillate: 1. to waver in mind or opinion; be indecisive or irresolute; 2. to sway unsteadily; waver; totter; stagger; 3. 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Ode to a Nightingale<\/h6>\n
BY JOHN KEATS<\/h6>\n
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
\nMy sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
\nOr emptied some dull opiate to the drains
\nOne minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
\n‘Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
\nBut being too happy in thine happiness,\u2014
\nThat thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees
\nIn some melodious plot
\nOf beechen green, and shadows numberless,
\nSingest of summer in full-throated ease.<\/h6>\nO, for a draught of vintage! that hath been
\nCool’d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
\nTasting of Flora and the country green,
\nDance, and Proven\u00e7al song, and sunburnt mirth!
\nO for a beaker full of the warm South,
\nFull of the true, the blushful Hippocrene,
\nWith beaded bubbles winking at the brim,
\nAnd purple-stained mouth;
\nThat I might drink, and leave the world unseen,
\nAnd with thee fade away into the forest dim:<\/h6>\nFade far away, dissolve, and quite forget
\nWhat thou among the leaves hast never known,
\nThe weariness, the fever, and the fret
\nHere, where men sit and hear each other groan;
\nWhere palsy shakes a few, sad, last gray hairs,
\nWhere youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies;
\nWhere but to think is to be full of sorrow
\nAnd leaden-eyed despairs,
\nWhere Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,
\nOr new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.<\/h6>\nAway! away! for I will fly to thee,
\nNot charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
\nBut on the viewless wings of Poesy,
\nThough the dull brain perplexes and retards:
\nAlready with thee! tender is the night,
\nAnd haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
\nCluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
\nBut here there is no light,
\nSave what from heaven is with the breezes blown
\nThrough verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.<\/h6>\nI cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
\nNor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
\nBut, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
\nWherewith the seasonable month endows
\nThe grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild;
\nWhite hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine;
\nFast fading violets cover’d up in leaves;
\nAnd mid-May’s eldest child,
\nThe coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,
\nThe murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.<\/h6>\nDarkling I listen; and, for many a time
\nI have been half in love with easeful Death,
\nCall’d him soft names in many a mused rhyme,
\nTo take into the air my quiet breath;
\nNow more than ever seems it rich to die,
\nTo cease upon the midnight with no pain,
\nWhile thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
\nIn such an ecstasy!
\nStill wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain\u2014
\nTo thy high requiem become a sod.<\/h6>\nThou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
\nNo hungry generations tread thee down;
\nThe voice I hear this passing night was heard
\nIn ancient days by emperor and clown:
\nPerhaps the self-same song that found a path
\nThrough the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
\nShe stood in tears amid the alien corn;
\nThe same that oft-times hath
\nCharm’d magic casements, opening on the foam
\nOf perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.<\/h6>\nForlorn! the very word is like a bell
\nTo toll me back from thee to my sole self!
\nAdieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well
\nAs she is fam’d to do, deceiving elf.
\nAdieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades
\nPast the near meadows, over the still stream,
\nUp the hill-side; and now ’tis buried deep
\nIn the next valley-glades:
\nWas it a vision, or a waking dream?
\nFled is that music:\u2014Do I wake or sleep?<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n