Ode on Melancholy commentary

While both Keats and Longfellow often reflect on their own unfulfilled dreams and impending deaths, the poems however contrast on their own dispositions towards death and the future. Here, Keats expresses a fear of not having enough time to accomplish all that he believes he is capable of doing,

何梓涵 12010007 To Professor Hou Yiling English Literature The Transient Sublime and Mortality in “Ode to a Nightingale” Composed during the most creative period in Keats’s brief poetic career, “Ode to a Nightingale” has long been regarded as one of the most refined works of his poetry. Previous criticism has comprehensively explored its themes of nature, beauty and mortality, as well as its demonstration of Keats’s notion of Negative Capability. But based on my research, few critical reviews have touched upon the point which I find clearly suggest itself in this poem: that the poet’s experience here depicted is not merely an escape into the realm of ideal beauty, but also an intoxication with the Romantic sublime. Between the sublime and

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.

The True Definition of Sorrow ‘Ode on Melancholy’ releases the feeling that the poem talks about sad and heartbreaking events. On the contrary, Keats has partially deviated from this theme by examining the interconnection between good and bad, joy and pain, happiness and sorrow, and death and beauty. Keats applauds the sensible man, who is able to "burst joy's grape against his palate fine." By so doing, the speaker demonstrates a sound fascination towards melancholy rather than dismissing it in the poem. Unless one distinctly appreciates it, one cannot acknowledge joy. The verses of the "Ode on Melancholy" focus on how to adapt to sadness. "Ode on Melancholy" is the speaker’s way of criticizing or informing sufferers about melancholy in its

The poem I have chosen to discuss are, John Clare’s “I am” and “Ode to Autumn.” by John Keats. Both of these poems deal with the sublime and express the concern of self-consciousness that poetry addressed during the romantic period. John Clare’s “I am” is a refection upon ones last minutes of breathing life, or rather a pondering of death. The poem is cleverly constructed through the structured use of complex poetic techniques in the phonics and sense appealing aspects of the poem. Clare writes to manipulate the reader, not to show them his grief and despair from his point of view, but instead, a point of view of which he would like them to see from. I chose this poem because the poem itself, almost becomes self-aware, as though the experiences

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.

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

Hi guys! For me, poem is very hard to interpret. There is no right or wrong when interpreting a poem, but I sometimes don’t understand what the poet’s message is. However, after researching about the poet, era that it was written in and the poetic devices used, it made me

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 Romantics had an entangled time defining themselves, concluding that there was something “distinctive about their time—not a shared doctrine of literary quality, but a pervasive 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”.

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

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

I have been seeing three new patients recently, all Romantic poets who appear to be suffering from various levels of melancholy. Although each one of these poets is highly successful and influential in the Romantic Movement, each has experienced bouts of dejection, loneliness, and disillusionment with reality. However, this melancholy seems different from cases I have encountered in the past. Strangely, none of these clients show symptoms of the excessive black bile that typically associated with melancholy such as apathy, lack of motivation, and hopelessness (Brady, Haapala). In fact, while all of these clients experience melancholic thoughts, these emotions appear to be more complex than depression as they allow the pleasures of deep reflection and often lead to feelings of sublime joy and inspiration. Instead of suffering from a clinical form of melancholy or depression, these clients appear to be experiencing a complex emotion of joypain which they believe has “the capacity to reveal the infinite powers of the self or the imagination” (Murray, 722). Yet, while all of these poets seem to believe in the importance of melancholy as inspiration for their work, each of these poets also seems to express this emotion in different ways. While one of these poets, Mr. William Wordsworth, often turns his negative ruminations into positive reflections on nature and memory, Mr. Coleridge instead experiences deeper melancholic moments that he cannot dispel quite so easily. Mr. John

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

Of all the great poets of the early nineteenth century, John Keats (1795-1821) was the last to be born and first to die. Born in London, England, on October 31, 1795, to a poor stable keeper, John Keats devoted his short life to the perfection of poetry marked by intense