A bower quiet for us...

The Romantics sought for a place where we can come back to ourselves, to essentials, away from the hustle and bustle of the world, and the mechanisation of life itself - which we surely still experience, in different ways today, and as intensely, if not more so, than at their time.

Keats reached the heights of poetic inspiration in his very short life. Some of his most extraordinary, and famous, lines come at the beginning of his long poem Endymion. Here they are:

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness 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.

There is so much in these few lines, so much depth in what Keats says about Beauty. But for the moment, I would just like to consider the Romantic bower, which Beauty makes for us.  What is a 'bower'? In this context it is most likely that intimate place in a garden, overgrown with vegetation, a bench framed by climbing plants creating a private space for reflection, or for lovers. French would probably say 'une tonnelle'. 'Bower' came up in the last post when we talked about 'burly' meaning being 'worthy to enter the lady's bower'. Here, then, is what an online etymological dictionary says about 'bower', which began, apparently, as that room, or chamber, and then became an intimate but outdoors space, enclosed, and apart from the world around:

Old English bur "room, hut, dwelling, chamber," from Proto-Germanic *bowan (source also of Old Norse bur "chamber," Swedish bur "cage," Old Danish both "dwelling, stall," Old Saxon bur "a house; a cage," Old High German bur "dwelling, chamber," buan "to dwell," German Vogelbauer "cage" for a bird), from PIE root *bheue- "to be, exist, grow."

Modern spelling developed after mid-14c. Sense of "leafy arbor" (place closed in, shaded, or sheltered by trees) is first attested 1520s. Hence, too, Australia's bower-bird (1847), so called for the ornamented play-houses it builds.