Welcome back to The Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson in today's Tuesday, May 7th, 2004.

Today's poem is by John Keats, and it's called How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time.

I'll read it once, then offer a few comments, and finally read the poem one more time.

How many bards gild the lapses of time? A few of them have ever been the food of my delighted fancy.

I could brood over their beauties earthly or sublime, and often, when I sit me down to rhyme,

these will enthrongs before my mind intrude, but no confusion, no disturbance rude to they occasion,

tis a pleasing chime. So the unnumbered sound that evening store, the songs of birds, the whispering of the leaves,

the voice of waters, the great bell that heaves with solemn sound, and thousand others more.

That distance of recognizance bereaves make pleasing music and not wild uproar.

So this is a Kitsian sonnet.

It holds a special place in my heart because I once wrote a parody of this poem for a college assignment entitled How Many Beards Gild the Lapses of Time.

And it was a, if I don't say so myself, a pretty clever catalog of famous beards throughout history, culminating in the beard of Aaron, with the oil running down to the fringe of his garment. I don't know if this poem still exists.

It's certainly not worthy of the daily poem, but it had its moments.

This poem has its moments, too, many more of them.

This is a poem about influence.

There is a famous essay by T.S. Eliot called Tradition and the Individual Talent in which he talks about the

impossibility of not being influenced by the work of artists that have come before you,

and that an individual artist has to find a way to recognize their proper place,

fit into their proper place within an existing tradition, but that they

really can't escape doing that to some degree. It's like building a new building in a crowded

city. There's already a skyline. There's already a cityscape in existence, and your building is going to be informed by all

of the others around it. They're going to cast shadows on your building at certain times of day,

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