How John Keats used Symbolism in his Ode to a Grecian Urn Essay

The similarities between the poems lie in their abilities to utilize imagery as a means to enhance the concept of the fleeting nature that life ultimately has and to also help further elaborate the speaker’s opinion towards their own situation. In Keats’ poem, dark and imaginative images are used to help match with the speaker’s belief that both love and death arise from fate itself. Here, Keats describes the beauty and mystery of love with images of “shadows” and “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” to illustrate his belief that love comes from fate, and that he is sad to miss out on such an opportunity when it comes time for his own death.

The poems’ ambiguities begin with the speaker describing the urn. However, these ambiguities are not just intended by Keats to remain enigmatic, they are there to be connected like a puzzle, piece by piece. As the speaker, who is a mystery himself, describes the urn, it is evident that he is bewildered with a spark of curiosity, attempting to grasp the meaning of the scenes (Mishra 51). The speaker first states what he sees from a distance. He describes the distinct advantages of the urn as an object, “Thou still unravished bride of quietness…foster child of silence and slow time” (Keats 247). He defines the world of art as

John Keats was a famous British author in the nineteenth century. He was born in London, England in 1795. His mom died early in his life from tuberculosis and his father died from fatal injuries after falling off a horse. This led him and his younger brothers to be placed under the care of Richard Abbey. At age fifteen Keats was an apprenticed to an apothecary. He wanted to write and not go into to medical but Abbey would not let him. Keats secretly wrote on the side and used some inheritance to fund his writing behind Abbey’s back. In 1816 Keats met Leigh Hunt and decided to pursue being a poet. Hunt actually published Keats first poem and helped him jumpstart his career. His first major poem was “Endymion: A Poetic Romance” . Soon after Endymion was published, Keats started show early symptoms

Keats’s “When I have fears that I may cease to be” represents the major key concepts of Romanticism values through his use of the significant metaphor that is linked with the natural world. “Before my pen has glean’d my teeming brain” symbolises the pen as a tool for harvesting and “Hold like rich garners the full ripen’d grain”, is the product that is finalised from all the hard work on the field. Keats reflects his hard work of poetry to the importance of nature and compares it to harvesting to visualise the method of producing these products. With the importance of nature that has been comprehensively characterised in the poem, Keats poetry has shown to be effectively reflective to the values of Romanticism.

When reaching the second part of the poems, the reader starts to see the differences between the poems. Keats starts to talk about the “Cloudy symbols and the “shadow”. It seems that Keats might believe that love is a predetermined life event, seeming as though he is disappointed that he might of missed out on an

John Keats was a well established English poet in the early 19th century. His work is greatly influenced by his family, studies, political views, and life experiences. Keats was born October 31st, 1795 in a stable to his devoted parents, Thomas and Frances Keats (15). Before Keats’s twentieth birthday he would experience many hardships from the passing of both of his parents as well as his grandmother. Thomas Keats died in 1804 after an accident occurred while riding his horse, leaving John Keats as the ‘man’ of the house at the young age of nine. Less than five years passed before Frances Keats fell ill and passed after contracting tuberculosis. At a young age Keats experienced great loss and suffering that would linger with him for the entirety

The first four lines are metaphors the speaker uses to draw you into the poem wondering who is in the urn. Making the urn as a mystery box. He goes into great detail about the urn, but leaves the final judgment of who was actually cremated in the urn to the listener. The speaker starts the poem off by acting as if the urn is a bride on her wedding day at the alter and the silence you hear as the groom approaches her. Maybe that’s not it, the ashes in the urn is a foster child, silence and slow time is the parents who are symbolized as the urn to protect the ashes. Then finally the speaker calls the urn a “historian” statin to the listener just imagine the stories these ashes could tell not just of those who have visited the urn, but of life

Primarily, Keats’s use of this theme shows the importance of human life. As Keats states with his line, “Verse, Fame, and Beauty are intense indeed, / But Death intenser -Death is Life's high meed,” (), life has many intense elements, but death ultimately serves as the highest point of life. Because of the intense questioning of death by Keats’s narrator, Keats shows the importance of living life before the finality of death inevitably hits. Keats also allows a certain amount of personal freedom through his use of the glorification of the ordinary with the way that he begins his poem. As the poem begins, Keats tells that, “No God, no Demon of severe response, / Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell,” (). This line intends to show the complicated nature of religion and the mute lips which it comes from. Keats essentially throws religion out the window with this line, and he states that there are more important elements in life than religion such as the importance of living itself. In relation to this statement of life’s more important elements, Keats does acknowledge death’s ability through lines such as, “Why did I laugh? I know this Being's lease, / My fancy to its utmost blisses spreads;” (), and “Yet would I on this very midnight cease,” (), but he also places a heavy importance on living life simply because it is to be lived rather than dreaded or pondered. Lastly, Keats provides a final layer of depth by implying that his narrator laughed because of life and death. Keats shows this through his constant questioning of life and death in the context of laughing. By providing a satire to both life’s purpose and death’s inevitability, Keats shows us the greatest example of glorification of the ordinary which he has to offer throughout his poem by illustrating that death should be disregarded and life should be lived in

Keats is known for his distinct odes that signify his achievement and accomplishments as a poet. The opposing ideas surrounding the poets causes them to contemplate and understand the world within them.

Time is the one constant in life that one cannot change and both Humbert Humbert and Keats try to evade it by trying to stop time. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, resembling John Keats, Humbert Humbert envies the past youth and innocence that transforms overtime into a relationship of distrust and disillusion. One can see through textural evidence that Humbert craves the innocence of a past relationship that was uncompleted though his desire to replicate this relationship with Lolita. Humbert wants to keep this perfect image of youth and innocence alive through his desires just as Keats wants to be a perfect image that never changes on a Grecian Urn so that time never passes.

Conversely, in another of Keats’ poems “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, he describes a piece of art that is spoken of in admiration. Keats believes that art as beautiful as this or any art for that matter is forever. This artistic expression transcends death itself. “When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe” (Keats). While everyone around grows old and eventually passes away this art is untouched by the hands of death. The works people leave behind are immortal and will withstand the test of time. Whether it be a sculpture or a poet’s work. Keats is not the only one who sees a death as an opportunity though. In “On Death”, another of Keats’ poems he speaks of death as a chance to let go of the suffering in this life and find peace in another. In the first line of this poem Keats creates an idea that when we are living, or awake, we are dreaming. “Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?”(Keats). I believe he’s saying that we are living in a dreamlike state, where we go by in our everyday lives and every

A brilliant American poet, Henry David Thoreau, once claimed, “This world is but a canvas to our imagination”. This idea that everything can be interpreted differently using creativity is evident in many of John Keats’ poems. However, how does “Ode on a Grecian Urn” reveal the beauty of art? Keats uses different images of melodies, love, and happiness to show that the idea of true beauty of art is within the eye of the beholder.

The twenty-four old romantic poet John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” written in the spring of 1819 was one of his last of six odes. That he ever wrote for he died of tuberculosis a year later. Although, his time as a poet was short he was an essential part of The Romantic period (1789-1832). His groundbreaking poetry created a paradigm shift in the way poetry was composed and comprehended. Indeed, the Romantic period provided a shift from reason to belief in the senses and intuition. “Keats’s poem is able to address some of the most common assumptions and valorizations in the study of Romantic poetry, such as the opposition between “organic culture” and the alienation of modernity”. (O’Rourke, 53) The irony of Keats’s Urn is he likens

John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is written through the power of eternity, beauty and truth regardless of existence, as Wordsworth showed likewise. Keats illustrated his poem through love in its sublime. For example, in the first stanza he says, “What wild ecstasy?” (Keats 930). If ecstasy is a huge feeling of

Keats, on the other hand, uses the “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to express his perspective on art by examining the characters on the urn from either an ideal or realistic perspective. In the beginning, Keats asks questions regarding the “mad pursuit” (9, p.1847) of the people on the Grecian urn. As the Grecian urn exists outside of time, Keats creates a paradox for the human figures on the urn because they do not confront aging but neither experience time; Keats then further discusses the paradox in the preceding stanzas of the poem. In the second and third stanza, Keats examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover “beneath the trees” (15, p.1847) and expresses that their love is “far above” (28, p.1848) all human passion. Even though