The Human Seasons

This is a sonnet which John Keats compared human's mind in different life stage with the year's four seasons.

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;
     There are four seasons in the mind of man;
He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear
     Takes in all beauty with an easy span:
He has his Summer, when luxuriously
      Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves
To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh
      His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves
His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings
      He furleth close; contented so to look
On mists in idleness - to let fair things
      Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.
He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,
Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

It seems Winter and old age both are never being welcome. Only their coming are unchangeable.
Getting old and being closer to the other end seems helplessly and hopelessly to us. Are they so bad?
For my own experience, I think getting old is good cause it comes with more life experience and more self-knowledge and sometimes also one has more liberty. When our children have grown up. They manage their lives and we are free to live a life as we want to. And as we know more about ourselves and the world. We will not make as many mistakes as we were young to achieve our dreams and we are also more focus and also more capable to enjoy our life and to relate with others in the way we choose.

I aslo find in Shakespeare's play-As you like it, Shakespeare also use the character, Jaque, to tell the same topic. different life stage. And I would like to show it here. As John Keats read Shakespeare so much. I would think lots of John Keats's poetical theme come from him.

In Act 2 scene 7

Jaques:

All the world's a stage,
And all the men and women merely players.
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts.
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse's arms.
Then the whining schoolboy with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school. And then the lover,
Sighing like furnace, with a woeful ballad
Made to his mistress' eyebrow. Then a soldier
Full of strange oaths and breaded like the pard
Jealous in honor, sudden and quick in quarrel
Seeking the bubble reputation.
Even in the cannon's mouth. And then the justice
In fair round belly with good capon lined.
With eyes severe and beard of formal cut.
Full of wise saws and modern instances;
And so he plays his part. The sixth age shifts
|Into the lean and slippered pantaloon
With spectacles on nose and pouch on side,
His youthful hose, well saved, a world too wide
For his shrunk shank, and his big manly voice,
Turning again toward childish treble, pipes
And whistles in his sound. Last scene of all,
That ends this strange eventful history,
Is second childishness and mere oblivion.
Sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything.

It is a very rich discription of human life stages. I started to like Shakespeare's art.