“Ode to a Nightingale” – By John Keats

 “Ode to a Nightingale” is Keats most famous famous work. An ode is a traditional Greek form of poetry that celebrates what the poem is dedicated too. Ode to a Nightingale was a part of the collection of 1819 Odes. Ode to a Nightingale is a Horation ode named after, the Roman poet Horace. Horation ode’s have a consistent stanza length and meter. The poem has eight stanza of ten lines.

The speaker is an older man struggling with reality and time. He uses his poetry and Imagination to escape from his life. He bears a resemblance to Keats with his obsession with death. But Keats was a young man at the time, and not the poems speaker.

The poem is set both in and out of the woods. In the beginning the speaker is sitting outside the forest and the birds song ‘draws’ him into the middle of forest. He goes back in time to others who heard the song. Then to the woods. Just as quickly as he slips into the dream. He is called back to reality and the woods become idylie. But inaccessible as the nightingale flies away.

The song of the nightingale is important as it symbolizes ideals and perfection that Keats finds lacking in society. Keats describes the song as timeless, especially in his description of the nightingale continuing to sing after his ( the narrator’s) death.

Keats uses a multitude of figurative language to convey his tone throughout this poem. The speaker describes his numbness and heartache hearing the song of the nightingale somewhere in the forest. He toys with the idea of the oblivion that alcohol could lead him to. He speaks softly to death, embracing the idea of painless death and the escape from humanity. Alas with the departure of the nightingale, the speaker cannot distinguish between reality or a dream. The nightingale is important as it symbolizes immortality and freedom. Throughout the poem, Keats describes this idea of the nightingale being free and timeless, emphasizing his own desire to be free of society and humanity.

So, we can say that throughout his poem, Keats makes allusions to figures of Greek and Roman mythology. This is important in that it demonstrates the timelessness that Keats thinks of when imagining the song of the nightingale.

“Ode on A Grecian Urn” – John Keats

About the Author:

John Keats was Born on October 31^st 1795 in London England. His poems were not received well during his life. And he seriously wrote poetry for only six years. Aha e was an English Romantic poet. The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of Odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analyzed in English Literature.

The theme in the poem is how time moves on yet the Urn is remaining unchanged and will forever be beautiful; unlike everything else that will change get older and eventually die.

The title refers to an ancient Grecian Urn that describes different scenes and different lives of people who are all entrapped in beauty, pureness, and agelessness. This poem effectively mirrors the image of a Grecian Urn Keats not only describes the physical appearance, but he also relates the symbolic meaning of the Urn as well as the images. The Urn represents, to the speaker, the concept of immortality and eternal life. The purpose of the poem is to explain that the only Truth that humans can understand is Beauty.

Analysis of the poem:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,

In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

In this stanza, Keats addresses a Grecian urn, which he describes as married to quietness and "adopted" by silence and time , because the urn is unable to tell stories on its own. The urn is compared to a Sylvan historian, because they both tell stories pertaining to nature. Keats says that the urn tells stories better than he does with his poems. He wonders if the urn, decorated with leaves, depicts gods or humans. He also asks where the scenes are set - in Tempe or Arcady (places in Greece). He tries to figure out the first image on the urn, where men are chasing after women. He wants to know what the reason is.

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats notes that the pipe music he imagines playing in the image on the urn sounds better than music in real life. He says that the piper cannot stop playing his song, just as the trees in the image cannot lose their leaves because they are a permanent part of the urn. Because of this, the piper cannot kiss his lover next to him, but that he should not be sad because neither she nor her beauty or their love can disappear either.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Keats describes the trees as happy because the images of them will never lose their leaves. He calls the piper happy because he song will not end, and neither will he love with the maiden. He says that love in real life is much different, and requires suffering - it ends with a hurting heart, as well as "A burning forehead, and a parching tongue."

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,

Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.

The next image is of a young cow (heifer lowing) being led to be sacrificed by a large group of villagers. He wonders what the town is like where they come from. Keats notes that wherever the town is, it is surely empty because every villager is attending the sacrifice of the cow on a green altar. The image is unable to change, so the townspeople are forever trapped and will not be able to return home.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

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."

In the final stanza, Keats describes the urn as made in ancient Attica. It is a beautiful urn that is embroidered (brede) and depicts men and women in the marble, surrounded by trees and leaves. Although the urn does not vocalize the stories it tells, it make the viewers think intensely about the meaning, in the same way that people question eternity. He calls the urn "Cold pastoral" because it is made of cold marble and is immovable. He says that when he dies, the urn will remain the same. The urn will continue spread the message that everyone needs to know:

"Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty."

So, whole poem is an example of personification because it describes that urn as if it were pure, throughout the poem it refer to the urn as a living being well.

“Ecstasy” – By John Donne

Ecstasy: Greek, Ek stasis – Stand (stasis) outside (ek)

-       A state in which the soul leaves the body and has communion with a divine being.

 This is Donne’s philosophy of love. It is a union between both the body and the soul. The body brings the two people together and in turn the two become one.

Theme of the poem is unconventional ideas of love and this poem criticizes the platonic lover that excludes the body. Donne believes that the body is what brings the souls together and this is a very metaphysical poem. The poem is an expression of Donne’s philosophy of love. Donne agrees with Plato that true love is spiritual. It is a union of the souls.

An ecstasy is a trance like state in which a person transcends consciousness.  A recurring image throughout the poem is the image of the violet. The redoubling of planted violets represents the souls mixing and becoming better than their singular souls. The violet is said to represent the “trials and tribulations of love” and was said to have once been used as aphrodisiac and a love potion. In the Christian religion, the Virgin Mary and modesty.

Donne throughout this poem, exemplifies the binding of souls the truest form of love, while also stressing the necessity of physical love so that the souls can experience love. Donne shows the turmoil of the lovers battling their want to stay together in their outer body state or returning to their bodies. By the end of the poem this conflict is resolved showing that although as one blended soul they are bettered, they cannot experience love without the device of their bodies.

“The Flea” – By John Donne

John Donne the master of metaphysical written by a poem “The Flea” The Flea poet uses to biological image of this poem in the order to idea with the theme of love. This poem is a plea from a man to a woman for her to sleep with him. Donne uses the flea as a vessel that has mixed their blood and thus a reason having sex with him is no longer sinful.

The poem is divided into three parts which are the processes of the whole poem. The flea that sucked their blood, the death of the flea, and the turning thought of the author. The speaker is using a flea as a means of convincing his lover to sleep with him. There is no setting provided, the speaker and his lover are alone. This whole theme to this poem is about sexual desire. The speaker points out a flea to a woman that he desire. She rejects him and he points out that the blood of each of them is already “mingling” inside of the flea.

Analysis of the Poem:

Mark but this flea, and mark in this,

How little that which thou deniest me is;

It sucked me first, and now sucks thee,

And in this flea our two bloods mingled be;

Thou know’st that this cannot be said

A sin, nor shame, nor loss of maidenhead,

Yet this enjoys before it woo,

And pampered swells with one blood made of two,

And this, alas, is more than we would do.

The speaker points out the flea and tries to relate it to something very trivial, but the woman thinks of it as a big deal. He points out that their blood is now mixing together inside the flea. The speaker tries to relate sex to their blood mixing saying that it is not a sin nor is it shameful. He then complains that the flea gets to do more than they do.

Oh stay, three lives in one flea spare,

Where we almost, nay more than married are.

This flea is you and I, and this

Our mariage bed, and marriage temple is;

Though parents grudge, and you, w'are met,

And cloistered in these living walls of jet.

Though use make you apt to kill me,

Let not to that, self-murder added be,

And sacrilege, three sins in killing three.

When the woman tries to kill the flea, the man says that it represents their marriage. He    argues that the flea contains three lives; his hers, and the flea’s. in lines 14 and 15, is says that the woman’s parents do not if she kills the flea, she is committing murder, suicide, and is disrespecting her faith.

Cruel and sudden, hast thou since

Purpled thy nail, in blood of innocence?

Wherein could this flea guilty be,

Except in that drop which it sucked from thee?

Yet thou triumph’st, and say'st that thou

Find’st not thy self, nor me the weaker now;

’Tis true; then learn how false, fears be:

Just so much honor, when thou yield’st to me,

Will waste, as this flea’s death took life from thee.

The woman kills the flea, but the only thing that happens is she gets blood on her fingernail. The man claims that the flea is innocent and the only harm done is that it took a single drop of blood. The woman man’s argument. The man agrees that his argument has fallen apart. The speaker then says that his whole argument was a way of proving that having sex with him would not be as disastrous and shameful as she thinks.

The poem ends before the woman responds to the speaker, we are left wondering if she will succumb to him or deny him and remain chaste.