Summary Of Ode On Melancholy

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.

​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.

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.

Keats was a key figure in the Romantic era in the first part of the 17th century which, according to René Wellek 's classic definition, sought to substitute 'imagination for the view of poetry, nature for the view of the world, and symbol and myth for poetic style. ' Therefore, Keats ' 'Ode to a Nightingale ', written in 1819, has an affiliation with the natural world, through both the metaphors he uses and his meter and rhyme. The fact that the poem is an Ode to a nightingale shows that Keats is addressing the bird in particular and therefore it asserts the link that is found in Romanticism between humans and the natural world. M. H. Abrams states that Keats wrote this poem, whilst reminiscent of a Horation Ode, as what came to be known as a Romantic Meditative Ode which is 'the personal ode of description and passionate meditation '. It is clear here that what Keats is passionate about in this poem is 'the country-green '. Keats coined the term negative capability to describe 'passionate mediation ' in a letter to

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.

John Keats’ poem, When I have fears that I may cease to be, is a well-known work that embodies many Romantic principles. The poem, explored in the context of Keats’ suffering from consumption, laments human impermanence while simultaneously exploring philosophical notions. Keats implements the use of the Shakespearean sonnet with each quatrain, beginning with the ambiguous, but time-bound word ‘when,’ manifesting these ideas in unique ways. When I have fears that I may cease to be uses the structure of the sonnet to delineate between the realms of reality and fantasy, while contributing to the overarching concept of eternity and ultimately reaches the conclusion that even lofty ideas that appear eternal ultimately erode.

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”.

John Keats is a spell binding poet, who lived a short life of 25 years, but left behind a towering legacy in the Romantic period. His work “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” is an imaginative masterpiece written in 1819, which was near his death in 1821. During the time he wrote the ballad, his brother died of tuberculosis; an ailment that swept over many members of his family, including him. He also became devoted to young woman, Fanny Brawne, but struggled with his continuous meager ownerships. The time of darkness, disease, and depression were close reflected in the ballad, where love and death both reign as did in his personal life. The central idea in the writing was risking everything for a pleasure that can be intoxicating, and can aid in

The early life tragedies of Keats caused him to declare his feelings on the fleetingness of life, happiness, and beauty. Keats is often known for writing his poetry in the romantic ode form. Literacy critic Jack Stillinger states why poets use the form:

Keats’ “Ode to a Nightingale,” can be classified as one of those most well-known Odes to ever be written. Although the poem is a tough lyrical poem to understand, it is as if the poet feels the pain and bleakness from the day to day repetitiveness of life; therefore, seeks to disappear into the make-believe world of the Nightingale to find relief which eventually leads him to acknowledgment. While listening to the Nightingale sing, the poet describes Greek and Roman figures to enhance the feelings he is portraying. The poet described an inconsistent life of contradictory using the concept of life and death. As well as, representing the struggle of reality and fantasy achieved through a transformed state of mind. One can see the poet’s feelings are described by words that show the mood of the situation while his thoughts change throughout the poem.

The next stanza builds upon the idea of desensitization, into the idea of a loss of innocence with “The Rainbow comes and goes, And lovely is the Rose,/ The moon doth with delight/Look round her when the heavens are bare, Waters on a starry night/Are beautiful and fair;/The sunshine is a glorious birth;/But yet I know, where’er I go,/That there hath passed away a glory from the earth. In youth there is an excitement

John Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" is one of the most recognized and studied pieces of poetry from the 19th century, with the critic Allen Tate even going on to say that this ode "at least tries to say everything that a poet can say (Vendler)." Keats was an educated writer and knew very well what he was talking about and was able to do amazing things with a simple string of words. Keats’s piece is written in the time of Romantic Expressivism and every word that he writes inside of “Ode to a Nightingale” accurately portrays the themes and concepts of this time period – briefness of our time on earth, mortality, a different and sometimes confusing look at the world around us (whether through our own eyes or some force on us), nature and all of its beauty, and the words that contain the strength to transport the reader to another place or time.

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

John Keats, a second generation Romantic poet, is considered the perfect Romantic poet. His works have been read, appreciated and studied across the world, though this was not done during his lifetime. Only in the twentieth century did Keats’ get due credit and respect for the complexity of his odes, his pursuit of truth and beauty and dealing with human difficulty and suffering.

“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget What thou among the leaves hast never known, The weariness, the fever, and the fret.” (Keats) In “Ode to A Nightingale,” John Keats is the narrator who is in a state of drowsiness and numbness when he sees a nightingale and then goes on to explain his encounter with the bird. Although the surface level meaning of the poem is a man expressing his thought to and about a bird, there is a deeper meaning that can be seen when you investigate the literary devices used. Keats uses imagery, tone, and symbolism to display the theme of pain and inner conflict between life and death.