Keats found a wild musk-rose perfect, until a friend's bouquet beat it
John Keats wrote a sonnet to thank a friend named Wells for a gift of roses. Before he gets to the thank-you, he describes the loveliest wild flower he ever met, a musk-rose graceful as a fairy queen's wand. Then he admits the gift outshone it, because these roses seemed to speak of friendship.
The octave is a summer walk. Keats wanders through happy fields at the hour when a skylark shakes trembling dew from its hiding place in the clover, and when, in a flash of medieval fancy, adventurous knights take up their dented shields once more. Among all this he spots a fresh-blown musk-rose, the first to scatter its sweetness over the season, growing as gracefully as the wand carried by Titania, queen of the fairies.
He savours its scent and decides it far surpasses any garden rose. That judgement sets up the turn. When Wells's roses arrive, Keats says, his senses fall under a spell of deliciousness. The cultivated flowers, which he had just ranked below the wild one, win after all, and the reason is not their colour or perfume. They come from a friend.
The last lines give the flowers voices. They plead softly and whisper of peace, truth and a friendliness that cannot be quelled. It is a characteristically sensuous poem, full of scent, dew and taste, but its real subject is what a gift carries beyond itself. The comparison between wild and garden roses turns into a quiet compliment: nature at its best is lovely, yet affection is lovelier.
Keats's own beginnings were modest. He was born in Moorgate, London, on 31 October 1795, the eldest of four surviving children of Thomas and Frances Keats. His father looked after horses at the Swan and Hoop, an inn belonging to Frances's father, John Jennings, and in time ran the place. The family wanted Eton or Harrow for the boys but could not afford it, so in 1803 John went to board at John Clarke's small, progressive school in Enfield.
Source: To a Friend Who Sent Me Some Roses
