The last stanza is the most important in the entire poem as it shows the poet’s thoughts and feelings, enhanced by visual imagery as he describes his emotions with the help of nature and words. He talks about a mysterious, unknown forest, filled with expanding branches of pine trees, creeping up the precipices of mountains that provide a peaceful atmosphere to the altar to be built for Psyche. The shrine shall be built in a colorful manner, amidst the “zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees, surrounded by the sounds of nature. Keats ends his poem by emphasizing on a window left open so that Cupid can enter the shrine and love Psyche.
The imagery of this stanza is strictly visual, comprising mostly of figures of speech, metaphors in fact and also a mental picture is created by Keats as he describes the “untrodden region of my mind”. The words he writes next imply that these are just pictures related to real works of nature created in his mind. The metaphor he uses for his mind is the forest, as the forest symbolizes natural beauty and dense collection of trees, which are in fact his thoughts; pine trees.
“Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain”
This portrays the natural occurrence of thoughts in his mind, which are innate and are always spreading out like the branches of trees. The thoughts are so pleasurable to think about, John Keats feels a sense of pain too thinking about it. This is where a connection between the poem and his lover, Fanny Brawn can be created as he isn’t allowed to see her due to his illness but his thoughts about her are giving him immense bliss, as well as pain.
Another important connection he makes with nature is the “pines shall murmur in the wind”. When wind occurs, the leaves on the trees rustle. In this stanza, the trees represent Keats’s thoughts while the wind, his inspiration. What he means to say by this line is that when wind blows, the trees rustle just like when inspiration strikes, the mind stirs. Using deep imagery, signifying dense thoughts, he explains the audience that the thought of worshipping Psyche creates an emotion so intense, a cloud of obsession will hang over his mind, in the same way a shroud of pine trees cover the slopes of mountains.
He further goes on to lull Psyche into a rhythmic sleep in the peace of Keats’s mind among the wood-nymphs, the Dryads. He promises her a fane created by the interwoven whims and fancies of his fertile and awake mind, generating it amongst everything that has no name to it, giving it a mysterious and eerie atmosphere, under the “stars without a name”. The last visual imagery of nature Keats has in store for us is the relationship between a gardener and his flowers. Just the same way a gardener tends to his flowers with love and care, which is also the same way Keats will treat his words, with the same love and care. Since flowers are abundant in number, lovely, fragrant and in a wide variety, this accentuates on the nature of his poems as well.
Keats’s punctuation and the use of language in this stanza are quite predictable. Since he stresses on the natural progression of his thoughts, he uses his punctuation to highlight these points as well. Most of the lines end with a semicolon or a comma, with a few lines with no punctuation marks and the last line, an exclamation mark. The semicolons and the commas show the poet’s continuous flow of thoughts, in which he gradually progresses from one idea to another without much hesitation. The last line ends with an exclamation mark to display the end of the poem and thus, an end to all his thoughts. The use of language in this stanza is also a main reference to the lost beauty of nature and also has a deep meaning to it. Using nature to convey his thoughts, Keats also lets out his anger against industrialism, when he prefers emotional thoughts over the voices of reasoning.
The setting of the last line, aforementioned is the forest of his mind, decorated by flowery lyrics. The last two lines,
“A bright torch, and a casement ope at night, to let the warm Love in!”
The line above mainly refers to Cupid coming in a night, to visit Psyche but his also could be a reference to Fanny and John Keats themselves. When they were young, they were such close neighbors; they in fact shared the same garden. This reference could apply well here too.