Ukendt romer, eller en ung Julius Cæsar?
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This plaster cast reproduces an ancient Roman portrait whose subject remains unidentified—possibly, as the title suggests, a young Julius Caesar, though the attribution is uncertain. The sculptor of the original is likewise unknown.
Plaster casts like this one were made by pouring plaster into molds taken from original sculptures, allowing exact copies to be produced and distributed. Such casts were widely used for study and display, giving audiences access to important works held elsewhere.
The cast belongs to the collection of the SMK, the National Gallery of Denmark.
Background drawn from SMK — National Gallery of Denmark
Today's poem
Written on a Summer Evening
The church bells toll a melancholy round, Calling the people to some other prayers, Some other gloominess, more dreadful cares, More harkening to the sermon's horrid sound. Surely the mind of man is closely bound In some blind spell: seeing that each one tears Himself from fireside joys and Lydian airs, And converse high of those with glory crowned. Still, still they toll, and I should feel a damp, A chill as from a tomb, did I not know That they are dying like an outburnt lamp,— That 'tis their sighing, wailing, ere they go Into oblivion—that fresh flowers will grow, And many glories of immortal stamp.
John Keats · Public domain
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John Keats was an English poet of the second generation of Romantics, alongside Byron and Shelley. His poems had been in publication for less than four years when he died of tuberculosis at 25, and were indifferently received in his lifetime. His reputation grew rapidly after his death, and by the end of the nineteenth century he was firmly in the canon of English literature, strongly influencing the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.
"Written on a Summer Evening" is a sonnet. Its octave sets out a complaint: the tolling church bells call people away from "fireside joys and Lydian airs" toward "gloominess" and the "horrid sound" of the sermon, which the speaker takes as evidence that the mind of man is bound in a "blind spell."
The sestet turns the mood. Rather than feeling a tomb-like chill at the bells, the speaker finds consolation in the thought that such religious gloom is itself dying out, and that "fresh flowers will grow, / And many glories of immortal stamp" will replace it.
Background drawn from PoetryDB & Wikipedia