Keat's Odes

Keat’s Odes 

John Keat’s like many other romantic poets of his time, wrote about elements of the human soul.  Pain and beauty seem to be linked within his poems, as well as the transformation of pain into beauty as well.   The romantics believed that to live a fulfilled life, humans must undergo pain and to fully experience and understand happiness.    

Within the five Ode’s given to us, “Ode to a Nightingale”, “Ode to Autumn”,  “Ode on Melancholy”,  “Ode on a Grecian”, “Birds of Passion and Mirth”, we see elements of the romantic era and ones internal and external struggles.  Keats focused on death and the possibility of it throughout many of his works.   He gives plenty of examples from large to minor instances representing the loss of life, like,  the loss of a lover, or the death of nature in Autumn.    

Keats introduced the element of beauty as a distraction of death.  He connects the rational thought that yes, everyone must die inevitability, however, we can either choose to live out life in fear, or reinvent ourselves and embrace beautiful objects.  For example,  in “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker experiences great heartbreak and wishes to live like the nightingale  and sing beautiful music. “That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees-In some melodious plot of beechen green, and shadows numberless-Singest of summer in full-throated ease” ( 6-11).  The speaker longs to be like the “immortal” bird and experience happiness, freedom, nature, and beauty.   

In most of Keats works, much like other romantic poets during the Enlightenment, the speaker leaves the realm of the real world for a totally imaginative utopia, only to return to reality at the end of the adventure.  However, the speaker seems to be transformed or changed in his beliefs with a new experience of beauty.  Again, this is very visible in “Ode to a Nightingale, since the speaker speaks of the relation of visions and art.  

To Keats, art and creativity was very important.  He believed that nature and art were very closely related.  He also described the relation between art, nature, and the human soul. For example, in “Ode to Autumn”, the element of “harvesting” can be representative of “self -harvesting”.  The writing tool, also acts as a tool to harvest the thoughts in the brain, and one’s books are filled with details much like “seeds of thought”.  In “The Ode to Melancholy,” the speaker experiences great joy and sorrow, yet, the solution to such sorrows is described in “The Ode to Autumn” when the idea that yes nature is dying now, but, the spring will come again, and the fields will grow and the birds will sing yet again:

“Where are the songs of the Spring? Ay, where are they?  Think not of them, thou hast thy music too-while barred coulds bloom the soft-dying day-And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue; then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn-among the river-sallows, borne aloft-or sinking as the light wind lives or dies; and full -gorwn lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn; hedge-crickets sing; and now the treble soft-the redbreat whistles from a garden-croft-and gathering swallows twitter in the skies” (23-33).      

Lastly, a major element with the work is the idea of the disappearance of the speaker.  Some, like Keats, believed that it was impossible to understand what the poet was thinking as he wrote the poem and by the end of the work, the speaker focuses on a object obsessively  and as a result, they erase themselves.  “The Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a great example of that.  The description of the urn itself is so intricate , that for centuries, theorists have questioned who in fact is the speaker by the end of the poem:

“...When old age shall this generation waste, thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,-that is all- Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” ( 47-50)

Keat’s odes may prove to be very complex, overall, they all represent the same theme: embrace nature, life, sorrow, the imagination, music, and pain.  For all of these elements make up the dimensions of the human soul itself: pain is beauty and beauty is pain.