The Poetics Hampstead Heath
An Ode to Romantic Fantasies Amongst Lockdown Life
It’s hard not to feel enlightened when one climbs up to the top of Parliament Hill and sees the wide expanse of the London skyline in their gaze. The orange sun beginning to set, everything tinted with a warm autumn glow as temperatures begin to cool. I find myself thinking of John Keats, the line “While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day, /And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue” glides through my mind like one of those scrolling LED signs. I feel a touch of the sublime, a Romantic feeling of nature being powerful and incalculably awe-inspiring.
Affectionately nicknamed London’s Countryside, Hampstead Heath is vast, quiet, and always open. Making it a lovely place for someone who needs to get out and clear their head. I am not alone here. I see a couple on a bench, throwing a ball for their schnauzer. I see a group of friends taking selfies near a tree, I see an old woman with hiking sticks, booking it down the hill. It’s not empty, but it’s quiet. Quieter than the city. That quietness allows me to forget the things I’m missing out on, restaurants, museums, interactions. Here the world feels simple, beautiful, and sporadic.
It’s not actually that unusual to think of Keats when sitting at the top of the Heath. John Keats loved was a Romantic poet, who loved The Heath and lived here during the last few years of his life. One of Keats’ most popular poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ was written about and on The Heath. He along with other Romantics such as “John Hamilton Reynolds, Leigh Hunt, and Barry Cornwall. The painters Joseph Severn and William Hilton came too. And it was here that Keats fell in love with his ‘bright star’ Fanny Brawne.”
I leave the top of Parliament hill and proceed down the moor to find myself in a small valley, in the distance a hilly Highgate is staring at me. “Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget/What thou among the leaves hast never known.”
A Romantic mindset is one that many people today have been drawing comparisons to, especially with our impending lockdown and strict social requirements. Romanticism was a movement centered around “the importance of emotional sensitivity and individual subjectivity. For the Romantics, imagination, rather than reason, was the most important creative faculty.” Starting November 5th life will be much simpler, much slower, and will often feel reminiscent of living in Keat’s time, with not much to do and giving us more time to appreciate beauty and creativity in all forms.
Hampstead Heath can feel very isolating. Its 800 acres of countryside means that you’re in the city until you’re not… until you’re in the middle of a forest with no one but yourself. Isolation is a seemingly scary word in a time where any mention of it breeds anxiety and uncertainty for those involved. However, the isolation found here brings a sense of energy, of freedom that our lockdown lives have been lacking in recent weeks.
To take a page out of Keat’s poem, out of Romanticism life itself; in this Heath, I’m walking, taking it all in, trying to live someone else’s life. Perhaps to reset my perspective or gain new insight. Perhaps to stop me from going mad. With tourism being so low and Londoners being forced inside, one might actually be able to get a taste of what the Heath was like during this era. Combine this quieter environment with a lack of mental stimulation from lockdown, and The Heath is the perfect place to escape into a world of nature, Romance, and beauty. A world where creativity and appreciation are the norms and strict ideas of logic and reason are left for later on. Once you’re in this world it makes living in ours a tiny bit better, if only for a moment.
The sun finally set, I stumble down the path into a nearby forest, then out back into the busy street to head home. Wondering what Romantics I may encounter on my next quiet trip to Hampstead Heath.
