John Keats 's Poem, Ode On A Grecian Urn, And The Eve Of St. Agnes

Life’s mysteries are best stated in writing. Some mysteries are revealed, while others remain unknown forever. John Keats, one of England’s greatest poets, published several poems, including one of his most famous ones in 1819, “Ode on A Grecian Urn” (Keats 247). Keats was a renowned poet during the British Romantic period. Romantic literature focused on beauty and emotions. So, what is the significance of the scenes depicted on the mysterious urn? Is the urn simply a masterpiece of art with emphasis only on physical beauty? In the poem, “Ode on A Grecian Urn”, John Keats creates mysterious scenes on a Greek urn to contrast between everlasting art and human life. Keats contrasts both worlds through the urn’s elaborate description, the theme of personal relationships, and the ultimate message of beauty, with significant relevance to modern times.

​Torn between two worlds, Keats battled his own personal life between his engagement to Fanny Browne and the death of his brother. Also the poem was written approximately two years before he died. These life changing events resulted in Keats writing one of his most famous poems, Ode to a Nightingale. This poem is an escape from reality in trying to find a happy place such as the singing of the Nightingale (Fiero 9). The poem is a parallel to Keats thoughts and desires, which are directly connected to his reasoning for writing the poem, its connections to understanding nature as well as its reflection of the human consciousness and natural environment.

Keats uses the image on the urn to express desire that can never be realized. The urn depicts a scene of a man and a woman about to kiss, but this image is frozen in time. This

2. How does Keats tell the story in stanzas 36 – 42 of ‘The Eve of St Agnes’?

Hi my name is Dheer Bhatia, today I will talk to you about how Keats explores both imagination and reality in the poem Ode to a Nightingale. This poem is about how Keats escapes reality and goes to an imaginative world with a nightingale where he hears her songs and lullabies before inevitably returning to the real world. It’s an expression of love, hence the word ode, to the nightingale and her songs. The creative piece I have chosen is an illusion painting that is painted by Robert Gonsalves, and it illustrates the separation between imagination and reality, and its difficulty in its distinction. Keats uses juxta positioning, imagery, structure and rhetorical questions to explore the two concepts of imagination and reality.

In John Keats’s poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, the reader is given descriptions of the urn. The urn is old and Keats is acting as the interpreter of the urn. This essay will argue that the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn conveys the idea that art shows an idealized human existence that cannot be achieved by humans.

John Keats was a famous romantic poet whose work was characterized mainly by his use of diction, tone, and other literary devices to create sensual imagery in his works of poetry. Throughout the Elizabethan sonnet, When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be, one can see that Keats reflected his thoughts on life and death personal real life circumstances; ones he was facing during the time he wrote the poem. By using a combination of various literary techniques, he leaves the reader with a powerful impression of his own emotions. The main emotion he expresses throughout his sonnet is his fear of death and of not having enough time to live his life. Through the poem, Keats hopes to

William Butler Yeats was not a man to keep quiet about his passions. He expresses his need for more than just reality throughout his poems, longing for the youthful desires of his heart. Yeats often talks about escaping reality and shifting to a realm of fantasy in which his deepest thoughts are brought forth. He reveals his unrequited love through the visionary elements in his poems. His use of sensory detail in each of the poems increases the fantastical notion of the poems. Yeats longs for the things he can no longer attain, such as love and youth. Two poems that display his youthful desires are “The Song of Wandering Aengus” and “The Wild Swans at Coole.”

suffering made evident in stanza three. He seeks to completely enter into the ecstasy of the nightingale 's song so he becomes nothing more than an instrument recording the tiniest of physical sensation. For example, in stanza five, Keats describes the beauty of a place in the most minute detail. Since he is unable to actually "see" this place, he is using the sheer force of his imagination. In this particular stanza, the use of imagery is indeed present. The soft sounds and descriptions of flowers yield a very enchanting and beautiful atmosphere. Where Keats says, "Now more than ever seems it rich to die, / To cease upon the midnight with no pain, / While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad / In such an ecstasy!" (lines 55-58), is an indication of how he believes it would be marvelous for his life to end in such a state of blissful heaven. However, the irony of this is that, in Keats ' case, death would mean the end of the nightingale 's song. He realizes this when he says, "Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain - / to thy high requiem become a sod." (lines 59-60). This piece is an indication of Keats ' enchantment with the nightingale and its song.

Upon reading “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats, one may notice his references to the religions and customs of ancient Greek culture, and be able to contrast these observations to those he has made about other religions. The speaker studies the urn, and sees drawings of people partaking in activities and even dealing with personal struggles. An academic journal titled, “Just Beauty: Ovid and the Argument of Keats’s “‘Ode on a Grecian Urn”’ gives more information in regard to Keats’s observations. Arnd Bohm, the author of this article, tells of religious processes mentioned by Keats in both “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and one of his earlier works titled “Written in Disgust of Vulgar Superstition.” In these works, Keats references two different religions and different customs being practiced. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” ideas of beauty and love are also referenced heavily. According to the speaker’s observations, the Grecian urn seems to be not only beautiful and lyrical, but also has timelessness on its side; while such qualities are not mentioned about other religions and customs.

'Ode to a Grecian Urn' is a poem about a vase, but Keats has inverted

“English Romantic lyric poet John Keats was dedicated to the perfection of poetry marked by vivid imagery that expressed a philosophy through classical legend” (Jones). John Keats’ poems were written with specific messages that could be obtained from what his main topic was. Something that Keats grew passionate about was the idea that he could travel through reading books rather than going from place to place. Keats wanted to travel to learn, but as he lived his life he slowly realized that he did not have a lot of time left in order to experience his life. Keats wanted to live his life to the fullest while he had the chance, and although he only lived to the age of 25 he did exactly that. In each of the poems he constructed, a specific message can be learned from each.

Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the most emblematic poems of the English Romanticism written by John Keats. The urn acts as a time machine which guides the poetic persona into the antique Greek culture, which faded into oblivion and obscurity throughout the centuries. However this urn still captures the essence of this ancient yet golden age.

In other words, Apollo has to suffer first in order to obtain “knowledge enormous”, that is, the knowledge to sympathize with those who suffer, and he thus gains wisdom as it is the outcome of his godhead. He comes to the world as the incarnation of imagination which will turn him into the god of poetry. Significantly, his golden melody delivers both “pain and pleasure” to the universe. He is just opposite of Hyperion, who is in the fear for an unknown fate, and he is tortured by “fearless” and “aching ignorance” (III, 107) but he doesn’t follow the causes of his sorrow. With his powerful sympathetic imagination, he reads the history of the fallen gods on the face of the goddess of memory, whose pain is automatically planned by him and taken

The “Ode to a Nightingale” is exemplary in this regard. To follow the bird in its ascent, the speaker in a Dante-like movement descends along an underground path to a garden of “embalmed darkness” (43) – trading bacchic ecstasy for the musk rose’s “dewy wine” (49): a more appropriate substitute of the nectar from “blushful Hippocrene”. Through the appearance of the Rosa Moschata, poetically associated with the wild, but in fact known only through human horticulture, the poem’s circle of origins – from the source of divine inspiration to the “deep-delved earth” of the grape vine – closes in what appears to be the subjugation of nature under aesthetics. One might thus agree with Helen Vendler who stresses that this dwelling of Keats “can represent nature only as it exists in the repository of memory and