Ode On A Grecian Urn Essay

In the famous poem “Bright Star”, dedicated to his lover Fanny Brawne, John Keats presents the essence of love in passion and in depth. As its form, a combination of Shakespearean and Italian sonnets suggests, the poem portrays love as a subject full of seemingly contradictive qualities. As a subjective matter, love is active and passive, physical and spiritual, mutable and eternal at the same time. Holding immortal love as the ultimate value of life, the speaker imagines a brave possibility of love transcending life for his romantic belief.

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

Keats discovers the creativity of human life and the morality throughout the poem. The poet is in search of the pure joy and ecstasy sung in the nightingale’s song which is completely unaware of the anguish and suffering of reality. The poet believes that if he lives a life similar to that of the nightingale that he will be removed from all pain and anguish. As the poem progresses the poet ponders different ways of joining the nightingale and what he considers paradise. He comes to the conclusion that he cannot escape the realities of the human world. Keats probably wrote this poem when he

Poetry is used to express several different mediums through: structure, tone, imagery and rhyme schemes. John Keats’s ode “To Autumn” and Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “Kubla Khan” or, a Vision in a Dream” will be critically analyzed, compared and contrasted to each throughout this paper to further dissected the meaning of each poem.

Keats seems to find true beauty in everything; every view or perspective he has. In Ode to a Nightingale, the beauty is thinking that maybe death gives some one a chance not to have any worries, but knowing that there is always light at the end of a tunnel, and showing that there is always some one’s own Nightingale to put life into perspective when change is needed. Yes, the Nightingale in the poem might represent darkness in a way in which Keats thinks of death throughout many scenarios, but Keats still imagines this Nightingale as a beautiful creature in a beautiful world, “To cease upon the midnight with no pain, while thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad in such an ecstasy! Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain- to thy high requiem become a sod” (Lines 56-60). Keats is not envious of the Nightingale, but just wants to be like it and have a life of

Meanwhile in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the speaker experiences the belly of the whale when he comes to the realization that he will never be immortal like the painting on the urn. The belly of the whale--as mentioned before--deals with the lowest point in the character’s life, and specifically in this case, the persona, a human with a mortal life desires the ability of being immortal. The speaker undergoes the same wants as Dorian Gray but does not gain them. If anything “Ode on a Grecian Urn” serves as the realistic version of people accepting mortality than The Picture of Dorian Gray. Although Dorian Gray expresses what it “looks like” to receive what a person wishes for, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” turns a lesson into a wide perspective about what

In his ‘Ode to Possibilities’, Claes Oldenburg maintained, “I am for an art that embroils itself with the everyday crap and still comes out on top.”

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

The imaginative speaker in John Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale” embarks on a journey with a nightingale and connects his own life to the bird’s. His responses to the nightingale changes as he questions human misery, ways to escape cruel reality, and even the finality of death. Furthermore, these dynamic responses are illustrated by the diction, imagery, and tone found in the poem while the narrator plunges into an expedition of self-discovery. Initially, the speaker desires for wine to transition him from being burdened by the world to experiencing the freedom and carelessness alongside the nightingale in the night sky.

In the poem, both William Butler and Annie Johnson were fighting for a good life but only one of them succeeded. To begin with, “The song of Wandering Aengus” you can tell that William Butler was creative with a big imagination and also determined. William Butler had a desire of discovering where the girl of his dreams has disappeared to. Whereas in the story, “New Directions” Annie Johnson tried to find ways to support her family, took her own path because she was desperate to find a new life for herself and her kids. Annie Johnson hoped to give herself and her children an excellent, successful life. Annie Johnson and William Butler both wished to be successful even though one of them made it to that goal. So Overall, both wished for a happy life.

In the second stanza, the speaker beholds a piper joyfully playing under the tress for his lover to find him with song. “Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; not to the sensual ear, but, more endeared. The use of imagery of the senses is effective here. For I consider poetry to be more musical in nature than literary text. The speaker claims to be hearing melodies emanating from the urn, which for me the sound transmission from the urn correlates to the finite aspects of fleeting love. While the nature of art of the urn seems to me to represent the exquisiteness and infinity of the universe. Indeed, the sounds of silence from art is akin to vastness of space and time. “She cannot fade, though, thou hast not thy bliss,” (line19). Keats is asking the readers to not grieve for him. Because, her beauty will not diminish over time it is everlasting.

observations on what is painted on the urn. "What men or gods are these? What

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