SOURCE: Lamb, Julian. “In Memoriam as Biography.” Critical Review 39 (1999): 20-28.

In the following essay, Lamb considers In Memoriam as an act of self discovery on par with the poet's cognitive and emotional experience, thus serving as a biographical record of the poet's “secondary life experience.”

It is not sufficiently recognized that Keats' ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is a dramatic poem. The drama or action of the poem does not come from the nightingale itself. The bird does little more than sing and, eventually, fly away. Most of the drama comes from the poet's asserting faith and doubt in a number of different areas; this is the drama of emotion and cognition. However, there is another drama taking place which is so pervasive that we barely notice it: the drama of the poet writing the poem. The link between the second last and last stanzas serves to bring this...