Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode to Autumn Essay

Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode to Autumn The casual reader of conjuration Keats poetry would nearly certainly be impressed by the cutting and abundant detail of its verse, the perpetual freshness of its phrase and the extraordinarily loaded sensory images scattered throughout its cable systems. But, without a deeper, more intense instruction of his songs as mere p nontextual matters of a larger whole, the reader may miss specific pedestals and nonpargonils which are not as readily presumable as are the obvious stylistic hallmarks. Through Keats eyes, the world is a enthrone full of idealistic beauty, both artistic and natural, whos inherent immortality, is to him a constant reminder of that man is irrevocably subject to decay and death. This theme is one which dominates a large portion of his late poetry and is most readily apparent in three of his most famous Odes To a Nightingale, To Autumn and on a Grecian Urn. In the Ode to a Nightingale, i t is the ideal beauty of the Nightingales song - as permanent as nature itself - in the Ode on a Grecian Urn, it is the perfection of beauty as art transfixed and transfigured forever in the Grecian Urn - and in the Ode to Autumn it is the exquisiteness of the era idealised and immortalised as part of the natural cycle - which symbolise utter(a) and idealistic images of profound beauty. In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats uses the central symbol of a bird to exemplify the perfect beauty in nature. The nightingale sings to the poets senses whose panache for its song makes the bird ceaseless and thus reminds him of how his own mortality separates him from this beauty. The poem begins My heart aches, and a drowsey numbness pains (Norton 1845). In this first line Keats introduces his o... ...fused by the true essence of his subjects for a bird must die off and an urn must crumble and are but symbols of things imagined. Keats however, does discover his elusive eternal beauty i n his Ode to Autumn, realising that it is mother nature, with her ever recurring seasons and perfection of theatrical role that is profoundly beautiful. Growing, maturing and dying are no longer avoided in Ode to autumn, they are embraced and accepted as necessary for the continuity of the seasons cycle. Keats, through his poetry, is constantly reminding us that the moment, whether short of duration or eternally present, is to be savoured for all things that experience in mans world are subject to decay and death because our expertness to perceive them is limited. The world is no longer simply a place of song birds, pleasing art and fruit laden trees, but a world of profound and everlasting beauty.