Endymion: A Poetic Romance

Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1818

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Poem Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Literary Devices

Form and Meter

Endymion is written in heroic couplets. These are pairs of lines that rhyme and are generally written in iambic pentameter (10-syllable lines that alternate unstressed and stressed syllables), or a loose pentameter (lines around 10 syllables). Keats revived the heroic couplet form, which was popular in previous centuries. Christopher Marlowe and John Donne used heroic couplets, as did many translations (or modernizations) of Chaucer.

The stanzas of Book 1 of Endymion vary widely in length, from three lines (in Stanza 27) to 146 lines (in Stanza 26). Each book of the entire work contains around 1000 lines, bringing the entire poem to a total of 4000 lines. This narrative work is a romantic epic, one that can be compared to Edmund Spenser’s Faerie Queene. While the Faerie Queene primarily focuses on Arthurian legend, it also includes Greek allusions that reflect the myths that Keats alludes to, and retells, in Endymion. Romantic epics are stories of adventure and love, usually told in episodes. Endymion combines the present action, such as the ritual to Pan, with past action recalled in dialogue, such as Endymion’s vision of the moon goddess. There are also classic romantic epic elements, such as the invocation to the muse and digressions by the speaker, in Endymion.

Consonant Sound Patterning

Keats uses consonant sound patterning to support the symbolism of water. One example is the passage: “Wild thyme, and valley-lilies whiter still / Than Leda’s love, and cresses from the rill” (Lines 157-58). This, according to the Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, “conveys languor and softness [...] The liquid consonants l and r and sometimes w, are soft and melodic, giving the impression of water and smoothness” (1325). This combines a pattern of consonant sounds with a literary allusion to the Greek myth of Leda and the Swan.

Enjambment

Endymion also utilizes enjambment, which is breaking lines in the middle of a sentence. One example is “My heart did leap / Through the cool depth.–It moved as if to flee– / I started up, when lo! refreshfully” (Lines 897-99). The line break after “leap” creates a moment of suspension. Enjambment allows the form to reflect the content. In this passage, the reader’s eyes must leap to the next line to follow Endymion’s heart. This device is also used after “flee” (Line 898), but the enjambment is paired with an em-dash. The pair of em-dashes separate the simile of the heart fleeing from the rest of the line, but the second em-dash falling on the end of the line also heightens the sense of suspension.

Metaphors and Similes

There are an abundance of metaphors and similes in Endymion. Similes are direct comparisons that usually include the words “like” or “as.” One example is in the speaker’s description of the shepherds’ priest: “His aged head, crowned with beechen wreath, / Seem’d like a poll of ivy in the teeth / of winter hoar” (Lines 159-61). The wreath on his head is compared to a string of ivy in frost. In other words, the simile conveys that his hair is white as snow and frost.

One metaphor, or comparison, early in the poem is when the speaker compares his thought to a scout. Keats writes,

I send

My herald thought into a wilderness:

There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress

My uncertain path with green (Lines 58-61).

This metaphor is directly before the main narrative of the poem begins. The poet scouts out the territory so as to not go awry in his retelling of the myth. Before he describes Latmos in Stanza 4, he sends out this scouting thought at the end of Stanza 3.