Charing Cross Bridge, London
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Beginning in September 1899, Claude Monet made almost one hundred paintings of the river Thames in London . These works show only three different views—Charing Cross Bridge and Waterloo Bridge, both painted from the Savoy Hotel; and the Houses of Parliament, painted from Saint Thomas’s Hospital. In the smoggy, industrial city, Monet challenged himself to capture effects of light seen through a dense atmospheric screen. Beyond the rectilinear skeleton of Charing Cross Bridge—reminiscent of bridges in Japanese prints, which the artist collected—rises the ghostlike silhouette of the Houses of Parliament.
Background drawn from Art Institute of Chicago
Today's poem
A Thing of Beauty (Endymion)
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever: Its lovliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness; but still will keep A bower quiet for us, and a sleep Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing. Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind us to the earth, Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o'er-darkn'd ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our dark spirits. Such the sun, the moon, Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon For simple sheep; and such are daffodils With the green world they live in; and clear rills That for themselves a cooling covert make 'Gainst the hot season; the mid-forest brake, Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms: And such too is the grandeur of the dooms We have imagined for the mighty dead; An endless fountain of immortal drink, Pouring unto us from the heaven's brink.
John Keats · Public domain
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These lines open *Endymion*, a long poem by John Keats, an English poet of the second generation of Romantics alongside Byron and Shelley. Keats's work was in publication for less than four years before he died of tuberculosis at 25, and his poems were received with indifference in his lifetime. His reputation grew rapidly after his death, and by the end of the century he had been placed in the canon of English literature, influencing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
The passage, written in rhyming couplets, states the poem's governing idea in its famous first line: "A thing of beauty is a joy for ever." It argues that beauty endures and does not pass into nothingness, offering relief from despondence and "gloomy days."
Keats catalogues sources of such beauty—the sun and moon, trees, daffodils, streams, musk-roses—and extends the idea to imagined tales of "the mighty dead," calling beauty an endless fountain pouring from heaven.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia