Keatsean Sympathy In Endymion

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 study of any poem often begins with its imagery. Being the centralized idea behind the power of poetry, imagery isn’t always there to just give a mental picture when reading the poem, but has other purposes. Imagery can speak to the five senses using figurative language as well as help create a specific emotion that the author is trying to infuse within the poem. It helps convey a complete human experience a very minimal amount of words. In this group of poems the author uses imagery to show that humanity is characterized as lost, sorrowful and regretful, but nature is untainted by being free of mistakes and flaws and by taking time to take in its attributes it can help humans have a sense of peace, purity, and joy, as well as a sense of

The oxymoron of the pipes in stanza two contrast the real from the ideal and appeals to aural sense of readers, “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on”. We gain the ability to almost touch, taste and feel the images in the poem through Keats vivid descriptions of “silken flanks”, ” parching tongue”, ”burning forehead” in the third and fourth stanza. The poets overall use of imagery, diction and assonance throughout this poem once again allows readers to exercise their sense uniquely through their reading of Keats poetry.

One characteristic embedded in the minds of almost all humans is that of succumbing in pursuit of one’s aspirations, especially with the approach of death. The fear and enigmatic mystery of death at the brink of this shortcoming may cause one who is near death to re-evaluate life as a wasted opportunity or a broken path of dreams because of the inability to find any type of success. The sonnets “Mezzo Cammin” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and “When I have Fears” by John Keats examine the thought processes of two people who submit to the struggles of life in a depressed way. While communicating a very similar foundational message and mood in a different way through diction and structure, the speakers in “Mezzo Cammin” and “When I Have Fears” identify their despair through likewise differing literary elements which complement and bring out the message intended by these troubled individuals.

Picture this: you have been told by doctors that you have a few years left to live. You will live the rest of your life in increasing pain and difficulty, knowing your death may be right around the corner. This was the exact situation John Keats faced in 1819 at the age of twenty-four. Upon hearing his diagnosis of tuberculosis, which was considered a death sentence at the time, Keats decided to dedicate his life to writing poetry. His work is viewed with high esteem and he is considered one of the great Romantic poets. Two poems Keats wrote in the short time he had left on earth were “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” These poems both tell different stories unrelated to one another. Although their stories are unrelated, both “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” have unique tones, structures, and themes that should be examined and compared.

Readers of Keats’s story begin to realize that the fear of a young death is a demon that haunts us all. This was Keats’s goal as a romantic writer: to connect with the reader, to portray his ideas in the form of art, and to make the reader see from his point of view. With his use of colorful figurative language, such as repetition, imagery, and personification, Keats accomplishes his goal. The reason that Keats is so successful in painting a clear picture is because he “uses his imagination to write” (King). By writing his poem in the form of a “Shakespearean sonnet consisting of three quatrains” (King), Keats, like any great artist, clearly states the point he is trying to make. Apprehension of a young demise is a plague that haunts us all. In “When I Have Fears That I May Cease to be,” Keats takes our hands and reassures us that we are not

The speaker refers to Endymion as lover, “Be you my lover’s sentinel” (Anne 8). Lover is a term for a long time that queer couples would call each other, instead of partner or girlfriend or boyfriend. The poem continues with the queer themes with the line, “You cannot choose but know my love” (Anne 12). The mentality that love is not a choice is a common one in the queer community, being gay is not a choice, so love isn’t a choice. This poem showcases his sexuality in relation to his poetry; while not having Christian themes, the religious themes of this poem are Greek. Endymion is from a Greek myth about a very handsome sheep herder. He uses religious themes to articulate his struggle with religion and his sexuality, in this poem he uses it to show acceptance of his sexuality.

intellectual and imaginative climate,” perhaps a “spirit of an age”,” (Greenblatt, 8th ed. 6). As this quote displays, the Romantic period of literature held a closely associated atmosphere with the time. Four ideas, impulse of feeling, glorification of the ordinary, the supernatural, and individualism or alienation all serve as readily available examples of themes which display the atmosphere discussed by this quote. Out of all of these themes, glorification of the ordinary serves as the main focus of Keats’s poem “Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell”.

In the early nineteenth century, John Keats and other lyricists entered an era of passionate speculation on the condition of man, art and nature. It is thus no surprise that Keats’ 1818 poem, “When I Have Fears,” is packed with fervent, emotional content. Like many of his poems, “When I Have Fears” has been understood to be about Keats’ justifiable doubts about mortality, having been born into a family beleaguered by terminal illness. This particular Shakespearean sonnet, however, stands out from the rest because it sketches a more nuanced depiction of death. Though death is indeed the root of his anxieties, this poem reveals that the speaker is ironically also able to achieve a kind of perspective on the world through the very nature of his own mortality. An acceptance and understanding of death’s perceived limitations seem to grant Keats an unconscious freedom that allows him to transcend, or overcome, his future uncertainties. Keats demonstrates this freedom in “When I Have Fears” by incorporating elegant paradoxes, imagery and naturalistic metaphors that accentuate the comfort and control that accepting fate can paradoxically provide during times of pain and death.

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.

Some of the most analyzed aspects of emotion and the life, by literary greats throughout the past several centuries, have been the issue of death and the physical, spiritual, and emotional attachments that can be defined as love. Even though writers of prose and poetry have long belabored these two specific areas of discussion, the depth and diversity in approach is something that can only be described with regards to the differential between personalities and the world you of the author in question. Accordingly, the following analysis will be concentric upon discussing and analyzing the approach and understanding of love that two specific poets exhibit within their respective work. The first of these poets that will be analyzed is John

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

Keats is obsessed with beauty in his poetry. Keats always creates a a beautiful object out of some mundane and poor existence. Most notably, in “Isabella, or Pot of Basil”, Isabella buries the head of her lost lover, Lorenzo, inside a pot of basil. Keats approaches beauty in a way fundamentally different from

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

In Book II, Endymion is found in his pilgrimage where he has caught a glimpse of Diana and lost it. He finds himself near a cavern's mouth, and prays for Cynthia, without knowing the identity of his dream-goddess, to help him to discover his love's dwelling. Endymion is