Keats Ode Poems Essay

This essay will work in consolidative subjects of Keats’ verse forms. Ode to a Nightingale. Ode to Melancholy. Ode to Psyche. Ode to Indolence. and Ode on a Greek Urn. The paper will analyse these verse forms and so use thematic links. In Keats’ verse form Ode to a Nightingale. the first stanza begins with the storyteller depicting grief. The undermentioned emotions each illustrate this chief point through the usage of words such as ‘drowsy numbness’. and ‘dull opiate’ ( Lines 1-3 ).

The first stanza introduces the reader to the natural component of the nightingale. ‘light-winged Dryad of the trees’ ( Line 7 ).

This nightingale juxtaposes the narrator’s emotion in a contrastive point of felicity. and therefore elicits of the storyteller a response of enviousness ( Crawford 478 ). The narrator’s purpose on comparing their batch with the felicity of the Luscinia megarhynchos is one full of earnest merely every bit much as enviousness. The storyteller wants to hold the nightingale’s felicity as is proven with the lines.

‘O for a draft of vintage…That I might imbibe. and leave the universe spiritual world. And with thee melt off into the forest dim’ ( Lines 11-20 ).

Therefore. the desire of flight is an constituted subject in Keats’ verse form Ode to a Nightingale ( Crawford 476 ). This thought of escape is farther established in the 3rd stanza as it reads. ‘Fade far off. dissolve. and rather forget…The fatigue. the febrility. and the fret’ ( Lines 21-23 ). The wish to be a nightingale. of the thins in life the talker wishes they could have is all tied up in this bantam songstress.

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and its life is envied all that much more because of the unachievable nature of the talker to go like the bird ( Columbia Encyclopedia 12356 ).

It is a different universe that the talker desires. one in which grief. loss. and antsy concerns of the mundane universe are excessively heavy to bear. and so their flight is non merely to go forth society. to roll off into the forests. or even to go forth the state. but to metamorphose into another animal. a bird. in which the really symbolism of flight alludes to get away. and a fast 1. Not merely is escape the ideal of the talker but to be able to bury about the concern plenty to make a beautiful vocal is the other aim in wanting to go a nightingale.

These semblances. and ponderings of transmutation is the subject which runs throughout Keats’ verse forms. For. in the speaker’s present province in this verse form. because. presumptively. of their inability to see the universe before them. as is interpreted in the lines. ‘I can non see what flowers are at my pess. Nor what soft incense bents upon the boughs’ ( Lines 41-42 ). Therefore. in going a Luscinia megarhynchos. the storyteller will cast the concerns of his present human province in society and be able to steep themselves in the natural universe ( Stillinger 595 ).

In the same temper of transmutation the talker suggests that possibly decease is a great flight. ‘I have been half in love with easeful Death. Call’d him soft names in many a mused rime. To take into the air my quiet breath’ ( Lines 52-54 ). Here so is seen the ultimate escape subject; Death. These two subjects. that of flight through nature ( nightingale ) and through supernatural ( Death ) run in opposing waies. as Keats points out in the verse form. “Thou wast non born for decease. immortal Bird! ’ ( Line 61 ).

Therefore. the bird is proven to be an ageless symbol and therefore. the poem’s storyteller must happen which persuasion; the natural or the supernatural will win them over ( Smith 400 ). In Keats’ verse form Ode to Melancholy. the subject of desiring joy is read throughout the verse form. The verse form seems to be an inspirational alteration from Ode to a Nightingale as the verse form illustrates a kind of derision from decease in the lines. ‘For shadiness to shadow will come excessively somnolently. And drown the argus-eyed torment of the soul’ ( Lines 9-10 ).

Therefore. death’s personification is in the shadows which the storyteller portends to be the terminal of life. where a individual should non travel ( Lethe ). The battle of depression between felicity is a really simple subject in all of Keats’ verse forms. and one that is no different in this verse form. yet its sentence structure is more elaborately woven ( Stillinger 596 ). The verse form states that felicity can non be gotten without melancholy and the greater the depression the greater the felicity.

The desire of the storyteller in this verse form. as in Ode to a Nightingale is to be joyous. although the tract to this joy is complicated with despairing ideas. and the dragging of world. This comparison and contrast of melancholy and felicity is best seen in the lines. ‘ She dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die’ ( Line 21 ). Therefore. the transcendency of the ethereal of Beauty. as with the nightingale’s vocal. is something that is captured one time. and so is gone. either changed into a memory. a dream. an semblance. or decease.

The accomplishment of beauty. joy. and felicity is the chief aim for Keats’ verse form. This nonsubjective is absolutely illustrated in his verse form Ode to Psyche in which the storyteller professes the beauty of the goddess. The storyteller is oppugning the beauty of Psyche. non to prove its world but to inquire whether or non they truly did see her. ‘Even into thine ain soft-conched ear: Surely I dream’d to-day. or did I see. The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes? ’ ( Lines 4-6 ). Therefore. Psyche’s beauty is non contested. but the vision of her beauty is by the talker.

The talker goes on to lucubrate on the forest scene as had been done with the escapist path imagined in Ode to a Nightingale. The storyteller goes on to discourse the nature of their vision as two nymphs encompassing arm in arm. a winged male child and Psyche. Thus. the component of the supernatural is combined with that of the natural. which was clearly defined in Ode to a Nightingale with the bird and decease; in this verse form they collaborate with the goddess being seduced in a wood glen. Therefore. these elements. natural and supernatural. work together to organize a collaborating image for the reader.

This verse form dwells more on the illustration of a scene of Psyche being made love to. and the utmost beauty of her. while the old verse forms were chiefly focused on the narrator’s reading of their universe in footings of flight and melancholy. The escapist path taken in this verse form may outdo be described as escape through beauty. The Godhead is predominately seen in this verse form that its presence in comparing to the melancholy wishes found in the old verse form points the decisive reader towards the point of view that in beauty. particularly of fabulous proportions. is found a different signifier of flight.

The belief in the aeriform kingdom. the kingdom found beyond the mundane. commonplace. and existent. and into the celestial spheres. The despair found in the old cited Keats’ verse form is found in Ode to Psyche in the component of desiring Psyche. of wanting her in this ( the narrator’s ) modern twenty-four hours. ‘Too. excessively late for the fond believing lyre. When sanctum were the haunted forest boughs. Holy the air. the H2O. and the fire’ ( Lines 37-39 ). The dedication to this fabulous kingdom is to the full witnessed with the storyteller in the concluding stanza. ‘Yes. I will be thy priest. and construct a fane’ ( Line 50 ).

Therefore. the storyteller professes to desire to be in servitude to the goddess and makes many vows. and paints a pretty image of what such a life of servitude would be like. This image involves a batch of natural scenes of the forest with trees. bees. birds. watercourses. stars. flowers. etc. Therefore. the image of the existent. the natural. is given to back up the claim of doing the supernatural every bit existent as possible; the subject of the natural and supernatural are seen one time once more.

It does non look as though Keats is composing with personification; that is. doing a adult female into the image of the goddess Psyche. but he is utilizing the existent image of the goddess to carry through a desire. Ode to Indolence trades with enticement and artlessness. The verse form begins. once more. with a really Keats’ hallucination affecting appareled figures. with urns. The intensions of decease. and of mythology are seen in this imagination. This verse form has the storyteller ask the three figures why did non go forth the talker entirely; this means that the talker wishes to stay in their province of laziness as Keats writes. ‘my pulsation grew less and less’.

When the talker is done oppugning the figures. and they leave the storyteller. the verse form takes a different bend. as the talker province. ‘Then faded. and to follow them I burn’d And ached for wings. because I knew the three: The first was a just amah. and Love her name; The second was Ambition. picket of cheek. And of all time alert with exhausted oculus; The last. whom I love more. the more of incrimination Is heap’d upon her. maiden most unmeek. – I knew to be my demon Poesy’ ( Lines 22-31 ).

The talker so is preoccupied with desiring something of the supernatural universe. as is seen in the old verse forms discussed. ‘They faded. and. forsooth! I wanted wings’ ( Line 32 ). The desiring of a different universe. the universe with the shadows is felt merely as strongly in this verse form as was analyzed in the old verse forms. The dream universe besides survives in this verse form as a subject for Keats. It is in the dream that the psyche exists more to the full than in the existent universe. that is the fact that the psyche is the conduit through which joy is realized. and so it is in a dream. or a surreal universe that the talker is able to happen felicity.

The yearning for the shadows in this verse form is the concluding image which Keats leaves the reader with. ‘Fade quietly from my eyes. and be one time more In masque-like figures on the drab urn’ ( Lines 57-58 ). With the image of the urn in this verse form. the obvious allusions to decease can non be misinterpreted. and so. decease as a preternaturally coveted figure as with Ode to a Nightingale is seen by the reader ( Mauro 290 ). The subject of escape. although rather obvious in the other verse forms analyzed in this paper is doubtless seen in the verse form Ode on a Greek Urn.

The thought of negative capableness is besides read in this verse form. or uncertainnesss. The reader is non given the individualities of the figures on the urn. although their impact on the talker is obvious. The figures are representational of Keats’ ain uncertainness ( Negative Capability ). The verse form serves to concentrate the usage of the imaginativeness as a gateway into the supernatural kingdom which in itself. and its cryptic are non ever known in the corporeal kingdom. The relationship of art to existent life is the inspiration for this verse form.

The same thought of negative capableness. or enigma as was seen in Ode to Indolence with the brumous three figures. and the reader’s ain ignorance on their individuality is one time once more seen in Ode to a Greek Urn. This ‘mystery’ or ignorance is most significantly read in the last three lines of the verse form. ‘Than ours. a friend to adult male. to whom thou say’st. ‘Beauty is truth. truth beauty. –that is all Ye know on Earth. and all ye need to know’ is said by the urn or is the poet’s. Keats ain position.

Each verse form analyzed and compared and contrasted in this paper has had an implicit in subject of truth; that is. the talkers attempt to happen out their ain psyche. their ain personal truth in the kingdom of the supernatural piece at times either abandoning the natural. or brooding more in the natural in order to do the supernatural seem that much more touchable as is seen in Ode to Psyche.

The subject of flight was really strong in Keats’ verse form. it was non all together the chief focal point of the poet’s point of view; alternatively the focal point may besides be the remarkable point of wanting a alteration. The thought of transmutation is what genuinely captures the reader’s imaginativeness with Keats. and it is with transmutation that a true concurrent subject is found.