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Recommended: John Keats works
John Keats, a second generation romantic, is regarded as one of the most influential poets of all time. Though his work was anything but sad or bleak, Keats led a life of many tragedies. At the age of 8, Keats’ father passed away and only 6 years later his mother died of tuberculosis. After studying to be a doctor Keats realized his true passion was in composing poetry and followed his dream, but through another series of unfortunate events his brother died of tuberculosis and he could not marry his romantic love because of his health and financial state. Fearing his life was coming to an end Keats spent most of his twenties writing many beautifully detailed poems which he expressed numerous truths of the world, before he died of tuberculosis at the young age of 26. John Keats’ death was a great loss to the literary world, but his legacy lives on partly in his work “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. This poetic work of art uses relation to ancient Greece through multiple characters to present situation, rigid structure to convey confidence in his ideas, word choice imagery and repetition to evoke emotion and set a tone, as well as contrast to highlight a theme in his work.
Through the title and the literature it is presumed that the poem has been based off of ancient Greece. Most obviously by the subject being a “Grecian Urn”, which was used in this sense as a form of artwork depicting a scene. Contributing to the style of ancient Greece, Keats also uses anachronistic diction which makes the poem appear older than those of its same 1820’s era. The situation is presented in two separate stories, that of the life of the speaker, and the life of the urn. The poem is told in the eyes of the speaker and therefore we follow his emotions throu...
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...asy, Keats understood the idea of “CarpeDiem” and used his days wisely. His keen eye for the beauty in detailed art, of all forms, now helps many others to understand the real beauty of life “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, and now we know.
Works Cited
Bai, Dr. Ronnie. "Poetry Analysis: Ode on a grecian Urn, by John Keats." Helium (2010): n. pag. Web. 4 Apr 2011. .
Lorcher, Trent. "An Analysis of Ode on a Grecian Urn By John Keats." Bright Hub. Noreen Gunnel, 07/31/10. Web. 4 Apr 2011. .
"Ode on a Grecian Urn: Introduction." Poetry for Students. Ed. Marie Rose Napierkowski. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale, 1998. eNotes.com. January 2006. 4 April 2011. .
Shmoop Editorial Team. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Shmoop.com. Shmoop University, Inc., 11 Nov. 2008. Web. 03 Apr 2011.
Keats’ poetry explores many issues and themes, accompanied by language and technique that clearly demonstrates the romantic era. His poems ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ and ‘Bright Star’ examine themes such as mortality and idealism of love. Mortality were common themes that were presented in these poems as Keats’ has used his imagination in order to touch each of the five senses. He also explores the idea that the nightingale’s song allows Keats to travel in a world of beauty. Keats draws from mythology and christianity to further develop these ideas. Keats’ wrote ‘Ode To A Nightingale’ as an immortal bird’s song that enabled him to escape reality and live only to admire the beauty of nature around him. ‘Bright Star’ also discusses the immortal as Keats shows a sense of yearning to be like a star in it’s steadfast abilities. The visual representation reveal these ideas as each image reflects Keats’ obsession with nature and how through this mindset he was able
John Keats’s illness caused him to write about his unfulfillment as a writer. In an analysis of Keats’s works, Cody Brotter states that Keats’s poems are “conscious of itself as the poem[s] of a poet.” The poems are written in the context of Keats tragically short and painful life. In his ...
Baron, forlorn in the loss of his Madeline. Does Keats merely make tribute to this classic idea of
Imagery and symbolism merged to express his imagination, he became a unique poet in an evolving world where Romanticism was quickly expanding globally, not into a movement, but a way of thinking. Keats’ mother and brother, and eventually he too, passed away of tuberculosis. At the time of his brother 's passing, he developed ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’. ‘La Belle’ expressed Keats’ intellect and creativity, although at the same time he himself expressed his angst and depression for the loss of his brother. His poem ‘Bright Star’ was written in a part of his life in which a woman had influenced Keats’ greatly, so much in fact that he was driven to write ‘Bright Star’ in appreciation and celebration of the love of his life. These poems reflect Keats’ intellect, originality, creativity, and his ability to merge the contextual aspects of his life and his imagination with the ideals and concepts of Romanticism to create powerful
Throughout Keats’s work, there are clear connections between the effect of the senses on emotion. Keats tends to apply synesthetic to his analogies with the interactions with man and the world to create different views and understandings. By doing this, Keats can arouse different emotions to the work by which he intends for the reader to determine on their own, based on how they perceive it. This is most notable in Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale, for example, “Tasting of Flora, and Country Green” (827). Keats accentuates emotion also through his relationship with poetry, and death.
John Keats employs word choices and word order to illustrate his contemplative and sympathetic tone. The tone could be interpreted as pessimistic and depressing because the majority of the poem focuses on Keats’ fear of death. However, if the reader views the last two lines of the poem in light which brings redemption, one might see that Keats merely wants to express the importance of this dominant fear in his life. He does not desire for his audience to focus on death, but to realize that man does not have control of when it comes. The poet uses poetic diction, a popular technique of the early nineteenth century. The poem also demonstrates formal diction that Keats is often known for. Although Keats meant for most of his words to interpret with denotative meanings, he does present a few examples of allusion and connotation. His connotations include “teeming,” defined as plen...
I deliberately did not look for an inspiration of this poem or a critique on it, simply because I wanted it to read in my eyes and imagination what. Good analysis of the mythological landscape he wrote in.
Keats’s Ode to Melancholy is best described by one word, melancholy. The Oxford English Dictionary defines Melancholy as a feeling of pensive sadness, typically with no obvious cause. In this poem, melancholy is the art of embracing sorrow and a sort of madness in order to be able to cherish the joy of truly living. Keats accomplished the idea of melancholy by using his imagery to reinforce the idea of sustaining opposites such as sorrow and joy in a person’s life. In the beginning of the poem, the speaker warns, “No, no go not to Lethe” which is the forgetful water of Hades (Keats 932).
Though written only two years after the first version of "The Shadowy Waters", W.B. Yeats' poem "Adam's Curse" can be seen as an example of a dramatic transformation of Yeats' poetic works: a movement away from the rich mythology of Ireland's Celtic past and towards a more accessible poesy focused on the external world. Despite this turn in focus towards the world around him, Yeats retains his interest in symbolism, and one aspect of his change in style is internalization of the symbolic scheme that underlies his poetry. Whereas more mythological works like "The Shadowy Waters" betray a spiritual syncretism not unlike that of the Golden Dawn, "Adam's Curse" and its more realistic fellows offer a view of the world in which symbolic systems are submerged, creating an undercurrent of meaning which lends depth to the outward circumstances, but which is itself not immediately accessible to the lay or academic reader. In a metaphorical sense, then, Yeats seems in these later poems to achieve a doubling of audience, an equivocation which addresses the initiate and the lay reader simultaneously.
Examining the definition of “ode,” there is a strong connection between song and poetry—an ode being “a poem intended to be sung or one written in a form originally used for sung performance”--, and within both poems the inspiration of each narrator is described in terms of creating poems meant to be sung. Essentially, Keats’s poem plays with the concept of the poetic form of an ode on a couple of different levels. Firstly, the nightingale, in stark contrast to the narrator’s feelings of despair, is presented as a “light-winged Dyrad of the trees, / In some melodious plot / … Singest of summer in full-throated ease” (“Ode to a Nightingale 7-8, 10). By introducing the nightingale in this manner, and by referring to it twice with musical adjectives—referencing its “melodious plot” and how the bird “singest of summer”—establishes this element of song as the focal point of the nightingale. Similarly, the goddess Psyche is first introduced by means of song, as the narrator begins “Ode to Psyche” by singing, and asking her to hear “these tuneless number” (Ode to Psyche 1) and to “pardon thy secrets should be sung” (3). The musical references to Psych continue in the third stanza, as the narrator laments the inclusion of Psyche into the Greek pantheon, he reveals
Truth remains a mysterious essential: sought out, created, and destroyed in countless metaphysical arguments through time. Whether argued as being absolute or relative, universal or personal, no thought is perceived or conceived without an assessment of its truth. In John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and E.E. Cummings' "since feeling is first" the concern is not specifically the truth of a thought, but rather, the general nature of truth; the foundation which gives truth is trueness . Both poets replace investigation with decision, and that which would be argumentation in the hands of philosophers becomes example and sentiment in their poems. Each poet's examples create a resonance within the reader, engineered to engender belief or provoke thought. Employing images of unconsummated actions on an ancient urn carved with scenes from life, Keats suggests that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"; Cummings, on the other hand, offers emotion as the foundation of truth, and supports living life fully through diction, theme-suggestive syntax, and images of accomplished action.
This allows for a smooth transition in his description of the ritual that marks a soldier’s death. To draw attention to the tears “in their eyes”, which could be in the eyes of the dead soldier or of their brothers at war, they are connected to the “glimmer of good-byes”, to represent the quick mourning for the soldiers (10-11). The connection here is furthered with the use of enjambment at the end of the tenth line; with no grammatical separation, the thought smoothly transitions from one line to the other. On the other hand, Keats uses the exact Shakespearean rhyme In the sonnets “When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be”, by John Keats, and “Anthem for Doomed Youth”, by Wilfred Owen, the poets’ use of formal elements create distinctions to mark the speakers’ thoughts and build upon the situation.
All written in just one month "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on Melancholy" were a result of Keats’ feelings during that time. These feelings were, “the intense awareness of both the joy and pain, the happiness and the sorrow, of human life” (Thomas). Keats greatly contemplated human beings need to placate their craving for happiness in a “world where joy and pain are inevitably and inextricably tied together” (Thomas). This amalgamation of elation and agony is the integral part of human experience that Keats recognized and established as truth.
How is Bloom’s theory of influence connected to Keats and his ‘Ode on a Grecian urn’? As indicated by its title, Keats’s poem and Keats himself was influenced by Greek culture, which is confirmed in a further reading of the poem, when Keats mentions Arcadia and gods in the following lines: In Tempe or the dales of Arcady/ What men or gods are these?. It is generally known that Greek religion was based on polytheism and Arcadia is the province of Ancient Greece, in which were localized scenes from many pastoral poems.
The second stanza of John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” begins with the line, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” With this line Keats is saying that while spoken word is important and beautiful, a picture is worth 1000 words. The first four lines of the stanza set the stage for the story of the Urn to be told, and there is a clear separation between the first four lines of the stanza and the last six. Keats makes this separation obvious with his rhyming scheme. The first four lines of the stanza go ABAB with B being an implied rhyme, and the last six lines go CDECED. Each line of the second stanza has ten syllables except the