To the Nile
Son
of the old Moon-mountains African!
Chief
of the Pyramid and Crocodile!
We
call thee fruitful, and that very while
A
desert fills our seeing's inward span:
Nurse
of swart nations since the world began,
Art
thou so fruitful? or dost thou beguile
Such
men to honour thee, who, worn with toil,
Rest
for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?
O may dark fancies err! They surely do;
'Tis ignorance that makes a barren waste
Of all beyond itself. Thou dost bedew
Green rushes like our rivers, and dost
taste
The pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou
too,
And to the sea as happily dost haste.
Keats
said to have composed this sonnet in a friendly competition with his fellow
Romantics Leigh Hunt and P B Shelly. A Petrarchan sonnet has an octave rhyming
abbaabba and a sestet rhyming cdcdcd. The Volta or the turn of the line of thought occurs from the octave to
the sestet. In this sonnet also line number 9 marks a change of thought: thinking
of the Nile as a holy/mysterious river vs. thinking of the Nile as an ordinary
river.
In
Greek mythology Nilus is considered the god of the Nile River. The poem traces
the course of the Nile from the legendary sub-Saharan Moon Mountains to the
Mediterranean Sea, and how it turns some parts of Egypt into fertile oases
within a desert. The poem is written in the second person, the poetic persona
addresses a personified Nile directly as a sentient being. In the octave the
poet acknowledges the ancient fame of and the reverence paid to the river. “Son
of the Old Moon-Mountains African!” - The
poetic techniques used here are inversion and personification. In addition,
this is also an invocation to a supernatural power in the form of the Nile. Then
in the second line the Nile is invoked as the “Chief of the Pyramid and
Crocodile”- the blocks of limestone and marble that were used to build the
great pyramids in Egypt were transported using the Nile. Hence, it is the Chief
of the Pyramids. On the banks of the Nile one finds huge crocodiles. The Son,
the Chief, and the Nurse are references to the different roles of the Niles.
In
the third and fourth lines the poet refers to a contradiction - “We call thee
fruitful and that very while[y1] / A desert fills our seeing's inward span”
– fruitfulness and barrenness, two extremes, exist side by side. In the next
line the river Nile is invoked as the nurse for the Africans. Yet the poet
immediately questions the truth value of his own invocation with the question
“[a]rt thou so fruitful?” followed by another rhetorical question: “or dost thou beguile/Such men to honour
thee, who, worn with toil,/Rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan?” The poet is questioning the fruitfulness/nurturing
qualities of the river. He is wondering whether people have called the river
fruitful only in comparison to what lay on either side of it as well as because
it offered "rest for a space 'twixt Cairo and Decan." He is asking whether the river had
fooled the various nations of people who travelled between Cairo and Decan
(Deccan?) – travellers of the ancient Silk Rout – into worshiping it? Here, it
is possible that Keats may be referring to the numerous ancient temples
dedicated to Osiris along the River which were worshipped by travellers, too.
“O
may dark fancies err!” – the sestet begins with a prayer/ a deeply felt wish
(to the Nile/ the gods of Egypt?) for his dark thoughts/ doubts about the
fruitfulness of the Nile to be false. Then he affirms with certainty that his
fancies were indeed wrong: “They surely do.” Here, Keats is critical of his
imagination or ‘negative[y2]
capability’ as he calls it. Keats says that “'Tis ignorance that makes a barren
waste/ Of all beyond itself.” Here, Keats might be talking about our ignorance
about the Nile or things/people in general. Ignorant people assume everything
beyond what is familiar to be a barren waste. In the same way the Europeans of
Keats’ age had either romanticized or demonized the rest of the world. Keats
strives to see a similarity between the rivers of England and the Nile. But
this attempt to positively evaluate the Nile in comparison to English rivers,
too, smacks of the European superiority complex as the Nile as the longest
river of the world is far superior to a river like the Avon, one of the longest
rivers in England. In the same way, if one is to compare the European and
African civilizations from a cultural relativist point of view, then one might
be doing injustice to something that is much older.
In
the last four lines the poet looks at the river from aesthetic point of view
and describes its journey to the sea using typically sensuous Keatsian language. The repetition of green contrasts with
the repetition of desert in the octave.
Thou
dost bedew
Green
rushes like our rivers, and dost taste
The
pleasant sunrise. Green isles hast thou too,
And
to the sea as happily dost haste.
[y1]once a year the Nile floods depositing rich loamy mud on the banks
of the river making it ideal for agriculture. The Egyptian god Hapi is
associated with flooding of the river, thus bringing fertility and
fruitfulness. According to Egyptian mythology, the Nile itself is considered as
a symbol of fertility. When the Egyptian god Osiris was killed and his body
parts were scattered by his brother Seth his genitals were supposed to be eaten
by a crocodile so that his wife could not resurrect him into life.
[y2]Negative capability, according to Keats is ‘when man is capable of
being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after
fact and reason.'
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