Ode To A Nightengale Essay, Research Paper
In Ode to a Nightingale , Keats is reflecting on a beautiful and imaginative moment of nature. He is wishing to savor this moment, but due to the various cycles of nature, this moment cannot last for long, there is constant change. Nature itself can go on forever, it is continuous, but on the other hand, for mankind, no one moment is immortal. Keats is aware of this and he wants to become part of it. The beginning of the bird s song marks the beginning of the moment Keats longs to savor. To truly appreciate this moment, and escape his own world, he feels as though he must experience this as intensly as possible – in a drugged and almost numbed state. Keates creates images to allude to the beautiful and inspirational intensity that this nature has brought. The Provencal song (line 14) and the blushful Hippocrene (line 16) are examples which represent this love and inspiration. These images are so strong that he desires to drink it and fade away into it, so that he could become one with nature. Consequently, in line 22, what thou among the leaves hast never known , Keats realizes that for mankind all that is beautiful must come to an end. He will not achieve success if he alludes to imbibing himself with alcohol. This is where the sorrow of mankind rests; due to our temporality we can only take beauty and its moments just for a mere moment. On the other hand, nature can experience and produce it over and over again. The Nightingale and its tune are able to represent this idea that nature is immortal it is timeless. The beauty that the song produces, to us may just be a brief moment, but in nature it is not this. Due to the cyclic nature of nature, it can experience this moment forever. In stanza VI, Keats is aware of this and longs to become part of this and the only way he now sees he is cacable of doing this is through death. He begins to accept the idea of death as the possibilities that it will bestows a peacefulness in human life. From this poem, it seems as though Keats believes there is a possibility for peacefulness. With the passage of death, he can be brought into this ecstasy . It can be said that death is a pathway through which we are able to become one with nature. In line 60, Keats makes a reference that to thy high requiem become a sod . I see this that our physical body is becoming a part of the earth, as our soul is able to unite itself with nature.
Ode on a Grecian Urn depicts a timeless theme that is relevant to any society. Through the use careful diction, Keats portrays the theme of eternal innocence and the sufficiency of beauty throughout his poem. He introduces this theme in the first stanza with reference to the unravished bride of quietness . The bride is portrayed as a virgin, and she will remain as one forever. This idea of eternal innocence and beauty is also evident in the second and third stanza. The trees with the leaves, the maiden, and the young man will always remain the same. He will always play the flute, yet never kiss the girl. She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! (line 18,19) The boy does not have the bliss of the kiss; but the poet says not to worry because the young woman will always remain by his side, young and beautiful. The urn is able to capture her innocence. Consequently, their love is pure, innocent, and eternal complying with this underlying theme. The urn represents a sort of lifestyle that Keats always wished he had been a part of, whose motto is Beauty is truth, truth is beauty (line 49). We as a society wish to partly believe that such a simple phrase could actually be the key to genuine happiness. It is nice to imagine that beauty leads to one being happy but everything is not as it always may seem. At times we all live vicariously, for example, through celebrities who tend to remain perfect in our memories forever, similar to the way in which Keats idolized the people depicted on his urn. Keats is aware that the urn may not need to know anything beyond beauty and truth, but the complications of human life make it impossible to live in this inert world filled with beauty. Life characterized on the urn is described as a Cold Pastoral (line 45). There is no real life here, for it is only able to retain its beauty because it is stagnant and nothing ever changes. He mocks this ideal lifestyle by realizing that no one is really truly happy, no matter how idyllic everything may seem on the out side. Beauty filled with pure happiness is unrealistic, there are aspects of both positive and negative elements in everyday life as well.
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