The Sea summons something wistful in Keats, a particular yearning for the ancient past, for self-knowledge, for a deep and relational experience with the Earth. Encounters with the sea in his work seem also to amount to a kind of pouring-out, or emptying of oneself, whether out into the world or into a higher dimension of thought.
Hello all. Lately I feel I have been followed around by a particular longing for the Sea. Always when I am along a coastline, looking out into the vastness, there is a contemplation inspired by the rising and faltering of the waves, and I feel it has a peculiar, poetic quality. John Keats’ sonnet, On the Sea (1817), I feel provides a lovely summation of these feelings. I will also explore some relevant passages from Tolkien’s fiction and letters, and a poem from William Morris, which I feel underscore this theme nicely.
It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound. Often 'tis in such gentle temper found, That scarcely will the very smallest shell Be moved for days from where it sometime fell. When last the winds of Heaven were unbound. Oh, ye! who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the Sea; Oh ye! whose ears are dinned with uproar rude, Or fed too much with cloying melody— Sit ye near some old Cavern's Mouth and brood, Until ye start, as if the sea nymphs quired!
Out of all the great and ancient natural wonders, I think the sea in particular held a special significance for Keats. Above, he writes of the ‘eternal whisperings’ of the ocean and the shore, as if it possessed a kind of animated self, older than the hills. At times, its ‘temper’ is a ‘gentle’ one, and in other moods it could ‘Gluts […] Caverns’ with its ‘mighty swell’.
This fascination with the ocean is constant throughout his work. Think of ‘The moving waters at their priestlike task / Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores’, in his famous sonnet, Bright Star (1819); or of his standing alone on the edge of ‘the shore of the wide world’ in When I have Fears (1818). At times, when I visit the ocean, I recall the ‘Charmed magic casements’ of his Ode to a Nightingale (1819), how they are described as ‘opening on the foam / Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn’. These lines come from a state of contemplation, with the sea appearing to have summoned something wistful in Keats, a particular yearning for the ancient past, for self-knowledge, for a deep and relational experience with the earth.
Encounters with the sea in his work seem also to amount to a kind of pouring-out, or emptying of oneself, whether out into the world or into a higher dimension of thought. In his sonnet, When I Have Fears, in particular, it is precisely when he is ‘on the shore of the wide world’, that ‘love and fame’ sink to nothingness, primal urges which evaporate into what he elsewhere calls ‘the realm of circumstances’; a realm which he seems to abandon, momentarily, for the richness of inward experience. In Christian mystical theology this form of self-emptying is called kenosis, meaning in Ancient Greek ‘the act of emptying’. The way in which this emptying plays out in the mystical tradition of the Churches is another matter entirely, though I believe the term is helpful to allow us to imagine this particular feeling that seems to overwhelm Keats in his poetry when he is near the sea.
I am sure we all know the feeling, when we are drawn out of ourselves and feel identified, almost on an atomic level, with the great and vast blue which expands forever across the horizon. Like in Keats’ longer poem, Hyperion (1820), when I am left alone with the waves for long periods of time, one feels ‘plung’d all noiseless into the deep night’ of Otherness, which is an experience that is difficult to explain, but also one which is wholly simple and recognisable when one is feeling it. This feeling of nature-induced kenosis I feel must be one of those baseline, bedrock feelings which the earth has the power to summon in us humans from time to time.
This line of thought can be also be pursued in the works of J.R.R. Tolkien, himself an author who stands quite clearly in the English Romantic tradition. In his lesser-known poem, Bilbo’s Last Song, intended as a kind of epilogue to The Lord of the Rings, he follows Bilbo’s final journey from Middle Earth into the Undying Lands across the sea. Though, in his journey, Bilbo is still a little while from the ship which would carry him into the West, he could still ‘hear the call’ of the ocean, and ‘the rising / of the Sea’. This is a particular sea-longing which in Tolkien’s mythology is also shared by the Elves. Legolas, in The Return of the King ch. 9, eyes some ‘white sea-birds beating up the River’, which stir him to speak of this feeling:
'Then I stood still, forgetting war in Middle-Earth; for their wailing voices spoke to me of the Sea. The Sea! Alas! I have not yet beheld it. But deep in the hearts of all my kindred lies the sea-longing, which it is perilous to stir.'
Tolkien scholar, Peter Kreeft, characterised this longing for the Sea as a kind of yearning for death (which would explain why Legolas thinks it ‘perilous’), though not a yearning which is in any way negative or suicidal. ‘The sea’, he writes, ‘is a nearly universal symbol of death’ (Kreeft, 115), calling to mind the deceased King Arthur, sent across the sea to Avalon, or of a Viking hero sent to Valhalla by flaming boat. In the context of literature I feel that the longing for death is best characterised as a longing for rest, of a lasting peace. In the conclusion of M.K. Hume’s King Arthur trilogy, Arthur’s son imparts a blessing upon the dying king:
‘Be at peace, Father, for your long labour is over.’
‘Truly?’
‘Truly, lord. Now sleep while we watch over you. Have no fear of the darkness for we’ve come to light your way.’
(King Arthur: The Bloody Cup, p. 563).
And the death of Arthur’s wife, Guinevere, and her passing across the sea to rest in Avalon, is the focus of William Morris’ short poem, Near Avalon (1858). Morris writes of ‘A ship with shields before the sun’, with ‘fluttering […] banners’, sailing gently across the waters. According to legend, this same voyage was undertaken by the fallen Arthur. Curiously, Morris refrains from describing the sea in any detail, as the knights, wearing their large helmets and visors, are possessed by such singularity of purpose that ‘They pass by many sights’ without averting their gaze across the waters.
On the second-last page of The Lord of the Rings, as Frodo’s ship ‘went out into the High Sea and passed on into the West’, there is a clear sense of him having passed from mortal life and into eternity:
'at last on a night of rain Frodo smelled a sweet fragrance on the air and heard the sound of singing that came over the water. And then it seemed to him that as in his dream in the house of Bombadil, the grey rain-curtain turned all to silver glass and was rolled back, and he beheld white shores and beyond them a far green country under a swift sunrise.'
Tolkien himself in his letters speaks of a recurring dream he would have of the sea, prompted by his curiosity with the legend of Atlantis, an ancient city said to have been swallowed by the ocean. Again, it is hard to miss the sense of death at work here, though it is perhaps less optimistic than the above example:
This legend or myth or dim memory of some ancient history has always troubled me. In sleep I had the dreadful dream of the ineluctable Wave, either coming out of the quiet sea, or coming in towering over the green islands. It still occurs occasionally, though now exorcized by writing about it. It always ends by surrender, and I awake gasping out of deep water.
(Tolkien, Letter 257, Quoted by Kreeft, 112).
Aside from the larger, symbolic significance of the sea in literature, the ocean also has some practical, therapeutic effects, according to Keats. In On the Sea, he enthusiastically recommends to anybody— ‘Oh ye!’ — with ‘eyeballs vexed and tired’, to ‘Feast them upon the wildness of the Sea’ for some relief. And additionally, for those ‘whose ears are dinned with uproar rude’ (no doubt he has in mind the harsh soundscape of industrial London), they should ‘Sit ye near some old Cavern’s Mouth and brood’. As someone who lives not too far away from the sea, I find myself wholeheartedly agreeing.
Works Cited:
Kreeft, Peter. The Philosophy of Tolkien. San Francisco: Ignatius Press. 2005.
Hume, M.K. King Arthur: The Bloody Cup. London: Headline Review. 2010.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. London: Harper Collins. 1991.
Poems cited:
John Keats. On the Sea (1817), Bright Star (1819), When I Have Fears (1818), Ode to a Nightingale (1819), Hyperion (1820).
William Morris. Near Avalon (1858).
I studied the works of C.S. Lewis under Dr. Kreeft at Boston College—brilliant man and a riot in the classroom. Lewis too has some stirring passages about the sea, particularly in the closing pages of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.
A worthy subject!
I have had the good fortune to live by the sea for most of be my adult life. This piece of writing evokes many watery prompts; also mention of painter Nasmith. What a wonderful way to begin a day!
Many thanks!!