8/11/2019 At First Sight Keats

1/3

At first sight Keats theme in the ode to a Nightingale and the ode on a Grecian urn is the beliefthat whereas the momentary experience of beauty is fleeting, the ideal embodiment of thatmoment in art, son, or in marble, is an imperishable source of joy It is the very acme of melancholy

that the joy he celebrates is joy in beauty that must die.

1. Content of Keats connected to the essay topic

Themes prevalent in the odes are of a nature concerning the passions of beauty and suffering, and

the mutability of human life. Quintessentially, there is an idealistic concern for beauty and truth

Ode to a Nightingale-Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so wellAs she is famed to do, deceiving elf! In Ode to a Nightingale Keats in his attempt to share the eternal joy and happiness of the

nightingale, escapes into the. The escape brings him the bliss he ever longs for, but he cannot enjoy

the imaginative reverie in which state alone he can enjoy this bliss. When Keats is recalled from theworld of the nightingales song to the actual world, he realizes that fancy cannot make a man forgetthe realities of life so thoroughly as it is believed to do. In other words, the illusion produced byfancy or imagination is after all, evanescent.

Was it a vision, or a waking d ream?

Fled is that musico I wake or sleep?

As a poet Keats is enchantingly and abundantly sensuous. His poetry has rarely been equaled indescriptions of the beauties perceptible to the senses. Ode to a Nightingale amply illustrates Keatss

sensuousness - his delight in the sights, sounds, colours, smell and touch. He will taste wine cooleda long age in the deep- delved earth, he will see the beaker with beaded bubbles winking at thebrim and purple -stained mouth, he hears the nightingale singing in verdurous glooms, and the

flies buzzing on summer eves, while his smell is gratified by the soft incense that hangs uponthe boughs and the fragrant flowers at his feet. In other words, the poem offers a rich feast for allthe senses.

Reality asserts itself

There are inspired moments when the present beauty of nature with all its sensuous appeal giveshim a fleeting vision of deeper reality. He then in his imagination passes from the world of time to

the world of eternity. Mystic experiences are indicative in the poem.

Ode on a Grecian Urn artistic perfection

escapism is a distinct feature of the Romantic as the narrator invests the nightingale with

immoratlity and beauty with the apparent permanence of the song. It embodies the thought that

8/11/2019 At First Sight Keats

2/3

however distressful the human condition is, man still possesses the capacity to respond to immortal

beauty and thus to establish communion with the unchanging world beyond flux and mutability.

2. Context of the odes in general

a deep spiritual communion with the natural world to the inevitabilities of valedictory and

exhibiting a psychological development within his final Ode.

The exhibits the apostrophe of Autumn as a Goddess Thee sitting carelessly... sound asleepdrawing upon Greek tradition of heightening the spirituality of nature. Inversely, Wordsworthcondones any form of personification considering it a violation of the organic. Wordsworth criticiseshis contemporaries who valued complex diction as he instead saw his purpose was intimate...adopting the language of man. Keats echoes this sentiment of diction indirectly in his To Autumn

mirrors an unmistakeable air of resolution similar to Ode on a Grecian Urn all ye need to know

The Romantic appreciation for subliminal nature and its apparent consoldary

if not a begrudging denial that death refuses sensory experience.

l- which is often..

Nature sustains an illusion produced by imagination that is evanescent as reality asserts itself.

Keats validates the individual capacity to respond to beauty,

he cannot enjoy the in which state alone he can enjoy this bliss.

8/11/2019 At First Sight Keats

3/3

hense establishing a communion with that despite the mutability of the human experience, one

may still respond to

from

and immortal source of aestheticism, as Keats Nightingale becomes a motif for the artist imbued

by the inspiration by nature.

as the persona longs to draw upon the immoratality and

shelly I met a traveller from and antique land..

Ideals- potent reminder of the French revolution- out of touch church shelly= radical vs. keats=personal reflection less revolutionary-

Shelly sedition against government they are few MASK OF ANARCHY

self-actualising precocious male- medical training - Keats idealism- individuality- imagination