For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be

Hear, O seekers of wisdom, the voice of F. Scott Fitzgerald, who once confessed: “For awhile after you quit Keats, all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.” This saying is not a mere ornament of speech, but a testament to the power of greatness when it enters the soul. It is the mark of encountering a spirit so vast, so luminous, that lesser voices seem but echoes in the cavern of time. Fitzgerald, himself a poet of prose, knew that in the verses of John Keats, one touches the divine flame, and afterward, the ordinary rhythms of men falter, seeming pale and hollow.

For what is Keats, if not the incarnation of beauty burning against the darkness of mortality? His lines—whether of nightingales, autumn, or Grecian urns—are not mere words, but living visions. They call forth eternity into the fleeting breath of human life. To read him is to drink from the fountain of immortality, and having tasted such water, the lips find other draughts insipid. This is what Fitzgerald meant: that once the heart is raised to the summit of Keats’s music, the plains below appear barren, their songs reduced to mere whistling in the wind.

Consider the tale of Percy Bysshe Shelley, Keats’s friend and fellow poet. Upon Keats’s death, Shelley was struck with such awe and sorrow that he wrote Adonais, one of the greatest elegies in the English tongue. In it, he declared Keats not dead, but a star now burning in eternity. And Shelley himself, though a mighty poet, felt the brilliance of Keats as something transcendent, a flame before which even his own words seemed shadows. Here is the living proof of Fitzgerald’s observation: that the encounter with Keats eclipses lesser lights.

Yet let us not despise the “whistling” or the “humming.” For even these are part of the music of human expression. What Fitzgerald teaches us is not to abandon all other poetry, but to understand the hierarchy of greatness, to recognize when we are in the presence of genius that shifts the measure of our taste. Just as one who gazes upon the sea cannot afterward marvel as much at a pond, so too the one who has heard Keats feels the contrast of scale. But the pond remains precious; the hum still carries warmth.

So it is in life: when we encounter the truly great—whether in art, in friendship, or in moments of revelation—we are changed. The ordinary seems diminished, but this is no curse; it is a sign that our spirit has expanded, and that we must now seek higher ground. To live only with the ordinary is to forget the summit. To live always in the extraordinary is to risk despair when we return to earth. The wise man learns to treasure both: the mountain peak and the humble valley.

Therefore, the lesson is this: seek out greatness in your life. Read those works that unsettle the soul with beauty. Walk in the company of minds that lift you upward. Do not be content with the hum when you can sometimes hear the symphony. Yet also carry gratitude for the simple melodies, for they sustain the spirit in between the moments of revelation.

What then should you do? Immerse yourself in voices like Keats, in music, in scripture, in works of eternal fire. Let them carve depth into your soul. But afterward, do not scorn the smaller tunes; let them remind you that life is woven of both grandeur and simplicity. For the heart that knows how to alternate between ecstasy and humility is the heart that is unbreakable.

Thus, remember Fitzgerald’s wisdom: when you rise from the feast of Keats, do not despair that all else seems meager. It is proof you have tasted eternity. Carry that taste with you into the hum of daily life, and let it remind you always that within this fragile world, there is a beauty capable of silencing every lesser song. That is the inheritance of the soul awakened by true poetry.