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ODE ON A GRECIAN URN: CRITICAL ANALYSIS

‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ was inspired by a collection of Greek pottery which Keats saw in the British
Museum in 1817. Perhaps, the inspiration for the poem was derived from a marble urn which
belonged to Lord Holland. In giving us the imagery of the carvings on the urn, Keats was not
thinking of a single urn but of Greek art in general. Keats had a natural tendency towards Greek
way of life. This ode shows the full force of Hellenic influence on Keats‘s mind.

‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’is based on the tension between the 'ideal' and the 'real'. Keats here
imagines an urn as a symbol of the world of art which represents the ideal world. Then he
experiences that world created through his imagination. The perfect, permanent and pleasurable
world of the urn stands against the destructive, corrupt and painful world of reality.

‗Ode on a Grecian Urn‘ is a well-built poem in three parts: introduction, main subject and
conclusion. The first stanza gives the introduction; the second, third and fourth stanzas describe
the main subject, and the fifth stanza presents the conclusion. The introduction describes the
mystery of the urn and shows what questions the images painted on the urn pose to the poet; the
main subject consists of the scenes on the urn as Keats sees them not with his physical sight but
with his imaginative sight. The conclusion answers the question which the poet has raised in the
first stanza. Thus in the words of Graham Hough,

―The poem has what Aristotle would call a beginning, a middle and an end.‖

The ode begins with an apostrophe to the urn, Keats addresses the urn in its special relationship to
silence and time. He uses three metaphors to personify the urn: ―the unravished bride of
quietness‖, ―the foster-child of silence and slow time‖ and ―sylvan historian‖. In the rest of
the stanza, he meditates upon the pictures painted on the urn and raises some questions to
remove the ambiguity. It introduces some paradoxes and does not tell us the names and dates that
we usually associate with history.

―What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?‖

In the second stanza, the poet ceases his search after the identity of the painted images To him,
―Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter,…‖
because such music is lasting and permanent. Thus Keats shows supremacy of art over life. Art
has given permanence and immortality to the musician and the lover painted on the urn. Keats is
forced to think about the superiority of art over life. Art is permanent, while human life and its
sensuous beauty are transitory. Compton Rickett says,

―Human life and happiness may be brief; yet art has given them a lasting durability, and so
links the ages together.‖
In the third stanza, Keats emphasizes the unchanging happiness of the figures by the repetition of
words and phrases. Even though their passion is unsatisfied, their state is far better than that of
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the mortals for whom satisfaction turns pleasure into satiety. The last two lines give us a glimpse of
Keats‘s personal life.

―She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!‖
Here Keats refers to Fanny Brawne with whom his love remained unachieved.

In the fourth stanza, Keats describes the picture of a sacrificial processionled by a ―mysterious
priest‖. He imagines that the people who have come to see the sacrifice can never return to their
homes. He realizes that just as a moment of happiness is fixed for ever in art, so is the moment of
desolation.

In the fifth stanza, the Keats addresses the urn in a different way. He calls it ―Attic shape‖,
―Silent form‖ and “Cold pastoral”. In this way, the urn is personified. It will remain unchanged for
the future generations and will continue to teach that beauty and truth are inseparable.It also
teaches mankind the permanence and beauty of art.

―… 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.‖
These lines have aroused much controversy among the critics. Mostly the critics are of the view
that Keats wants to show the supremacy of art over life as to him beauty preserved in art
haspermanent appeal to our senses while the beauty in actual life is transitory.It can be safely said
that quest for beauty was Keats' final and ultimate aim. Compton Rickett says:

"Keats had no religion save the religion of beauty"

The central thought of this ode is the unity of truth and beauty. According to Keats, beauty and
truth are not separate things but two sides of one and the same thing. What is beautiful must be
true, and what is true must be beautiful. The knowledge of this great fact is of supreme importance
and this fact represents the very essence of wisdom. Having this knowledge, mankind needs no
other knowledge.Keats has summed up his philosophy of life and theory of art in these lines. But
they have aroused much controversy among the critics.T. S. Eliot even called this statement ―a
serious blemish on this beautiful poem.‖

The features of Keatsian Romanticism and Keats‘ philosophy of art, beauty and truth are also
important in this poem. Though it is a romantic poem, we find the classical interests of Keats in the
style and form of this poem. This is a romantic poem mainly because of its dominant imaginative
quality. Keats had a strong desire to belong to the realm of the eternal, the permanent, perfect and
the pleasurable. For this purpose, he establishes some means to achieve that world of his wish
with the help of imagination.

To sum up, we may say that in ‗Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Keats emphatically points out the
difference between art and life. Life, though real, is subject to decay and death; art, though unreal,
has permanence of beauty. However, there is hidden pathos that runs throughout the poem and it

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remains a sad poem. The urn is a ‗cold pastoral‘; it has no warmth of human life. Nor can it make
any progress, because progress implies change. But the urn is beyond any change. So the urn is
deathless, but is also lifeless.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE: CRITICAL ANALYSIS

‘Ode to a Nightingale’ is the loveliest poem of Keats. Robert Bridges says about it:

―I could not name any English poem of the same length which contains so much beauty.‖

This ode reveals the highest imaginative powers of the poet. It was inspired by the song of a
nightingale which the poet heard in the gardens of his friend, Charles Brown.It is a spontaneous
expression of Keats‘ life. The poem presents the picture of the tragedy of human life. It brings out
an expression of Keats' pessimism and dejection. He composed this poem in 1819 when his family
life was shattered at the time when his heart was full of sorrow. His youngest brother Tom had died,
the second one had gone to America and the poet himself was suffering from Tuberculosis. At that
time he was also in the agony of his passionate love for Fanny Brawne. His financial condition was
unsecured. All these happenings had induced in the poet a mood of sorrow. He could not suppress
it. According to Douglas Bush,

―All these things compelled Keats to seek a favourite relief in abstract images.‖

It is a ‗richly meditative ode‘ as Prof Hereford calls it. The central idea of this poem is the contrast
of the joy and beauty and permanence of the nightingale‘s song with the sorrows of human life and
the transitoriness of beauty and love in this world.The nightingale‘s song in the poem symbolizes
the beauty of nature and art.

In the beginning, Keats seems to be an immature youth with a melancholic heart urging to find a
means of oblivion and escape. The poet‘s mood in the two opening stanzas is one of joy and
ecstasy which almost benumbs his senses.

"My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains,

My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk."
This mood is due to the rapturous song of the nightingale. But, the poet also feels an acute pain
because he is conscious of his mortality and suffering. Being an escapist Keats wants to throw of
the burden of self consciousness and sinks gradually into the world of imagination.He desires for a
beaker of wine by drinking which he can forget this world of sorrows and misfortunes and fade
away into the forest where the nightingale is singing its joyous song.The poet‘s desire for wine
does not mean a desire for warmth and gaiety; it is a desire for escape from the world of realities.

―That I might drink, and leave the world unseen,

And with thee fade away into the forest dim.‖
Finally, by the help of the poetic imagination, he makes himself able to fly in the world of the
nightingale. Next, we find the poet ―half in love with easeful death‖. The thought of his own

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death makes him contrast the mortality of human beings with the immortality of the
nightingale.According to Calvin,

―The poet contrasts the transitory of human life with the permanence of the song of the
bird‖.
Having denied a feeling of envy of the nightingale‘s joy in the opening stanza, he is now in a mood
of envying the immortality of the nightingale.In fact, no one can escape into the ideal world forever.
Imaginative minds can have a momentary flight into the fanciful world. But, ultimately one has to
return to the real world and must accept the reality. John Keats is no exception to this. He makes
imaginative flights into the ideal world but accepts the realities of life.He wants to escape from the
world of anxiety by virtue of his imagination but he is fully aware of the fact that:

―The Fancy cannot cheat so well,

As she is famed to do, deceiving elf‖.
‗Ode to a Nightingale’ is a highly romantic poem. Its romanticism is due to (a) its rich
sensuousness, (b) its expression of intense desire and deep melancholy, (c) its sweet music, and
its fresh and original phrases. These lines in the poem represent the pure romanticism:

―The same that oft-times hath

Charm‘d magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.‖
The touch of the supernatural, the mystery, and above all the suggestiveness of these lines have
made them a test by which purely romantic poetry can be judged and measured.

The poem is one of the finest examples of Keats‘s pictorial quality and his rich sensuousness. We
have an abundance of rich, concrete, and sensuous imagery. The lines in which the poet
expresses a passionate desire for some Provencal wine or the red wine from the fountain of the
Muses have a rich appeal.

―O, for a draught of vintage, that hath been

Cool‘d a long age in the deep-delved earth,
Tasting of Flora and the country green,
Dance, and Provencal song, and sun-burnt mirth!‖
Then there is the magnificent picture of the moon shining in the sky and surrounded by stars,
looking like a queen surrounded by her attendant fairies.

―And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne.

Cluster‘d around by all her starry Fays.‖
The rich feast of flowers that awaits us in the next stanza is one of the outstanding beauties of the
poem. Flowers, soft incense, the fruit trees, the white hawthorn, the eglantine, the fast-fading
violets, the coming musk-rose full of sweet juice—all this is a delight for our senses.

"Ode to a Nightingale" is written in ten-line stanzas. However, unlike most of the other poems, it is
metrically variable. The first seven and last two lines of each stanza are written in iambic
pentameter; the eighth line of each stanza is written in trimeter, with only three accented syllables
instead of five. It also differs from the other odes in that its rhyme scheme is the same in every
stanza (every other ode varies the order of rhyme in the final three or four lines. Each stanza in this
ode is rhymed ABABCDECDE.
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To sum up, Keats soars high with his 'wings of poesy' into the world of ideas and perfect
happiness. But the next moment, consciousness makes him land on the grounds of reality and he
bids farewell to the ideal bird. At this moment, Keats must also have been conscious that the very
bird, which he had idealized and immortalized, existed in the real world, mortal and vulnerable to
change and suffering like himself.

ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE & ODE ON A GRECIAN URN:

COMPARISON AND CONTRAST
Give a detailed comparison of Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn.
Compare and contrast any two odes of Keats that you have read.
With close reference to any two poems discuss the imagery that Keats uses.
Ode to Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn are poems about art. Explain.

―Ode to Nightingale‖ and ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖ are the finest examples of pictorial quality and
sensuousness. As far as the theme is concerned, both the poems are similar. Both poems
describe a universal theme – mortality and immortality, transience and permanence.Ode on
Grecian Urn gives us a very important message and this message is Keats‘ message which is
recurrent motif running throughout Keats‘ poetry. The message is that ―Beauty is truth-truth
beauty‖. On the other hand, the message which we get after reading ‗Ode to a Nightingale‘ is that
human being cannot run away from the problems of life and they have to live with the problems of
life.

In both odes poet‘s admiration is for the ideal world of art and nature. Things carved on the
Grecian urn are permanent and free from decay whereas things of life are exposed to change and
decay. The branches of the tree on the urn will always remain green; the lovers will enjoy their
present state; the music will always remain enjoyable; the lover will always have his beloved before
his eyes and the beloved will never grow old. On the other hand earthly things keep on changing.
Earthly passions do not give satisfaction and comfort to human being rather they leave a ‗heart
high-sorrowful and cloyed‘. Those who nourish these passions get nothing but a ‗burning
forehead‘, and a ‗parching tongue‘.

If ‗Ode on Grecian Urn’ shows Poet‘s admiration and yearning for the world of art, ‗Ode to a
Nightingale’ shows the same for the world of nature. Here once more, the poet wants to escape in
the world of nightingale which does not know pain and suffering. The world of nightingale is free of
fever and fret of human world; in that world pain and groan are totally absent; things do not grow
old there; there is nothing like disease there; thought which makes people sad and sorrowful is not
present in there; frustration and disappointment are nowhere in the world of nature; and love does
not change there.And just as in the ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖ Keats deepens the significance of his
poem by his contrasts between ideal beauty and actual life, so in the ―Ode to a Nightingale‖.

Both of the odes are rich in the use of symbol. The central symbol of ―Ode to Nightingale‖ is
Nightingale. On the other hand the main symbol of ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖ is Urn. The Grecian
Urn is the symbol of immorality of art. Nightingale symbolizes happiness. As the poem progresses,

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the song of Nightingale does not remain the song of a particular bird it becomes a symbol of the
eternal beauty for the poet. It is in this sense that the poet cries out:

―Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird.‖

In ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖ Keats calls the Urn as ‗unravish‘d bride of quietness‘ and―foster
child of silence and slow time.‖Addressing the Urn Keats says;

―Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity.‖
In the poem ―Ode to a Nightingale‖, Nightingale is personified. The bird is a symbol of happiness
and perfection. The Nightingale‘s world is the ideal world where the poet wishes to go to free
himself from the pangs and sufferings of the world. But just one word ―forlorn‖ is enough to call
him back from the world of Nightingale to the world of those who are suffering from palsy, growing
pale, spectre-thin and then dying. The world of Nightingale with all its charms cannot take away
from Keats‘ heart his sense of oneness with his earthly fellow beings who are suffering from ―fever
and fret‖ of the world.

Same is true in the case of the Urn. In ―Ode on a Grecian Urn'‘ the Urn is personified. It stands for
beauty and permanence. It contrasts with the transitoriness of human life which is full of misery.
The poet knows the value of the Urn as a beautiful piece of art but at the same time he realizes
that beauty is not the only thing of importance. The Urn though immortal is speechless. It lacks the
warmth and vigor of life.

Keats expands the range of his sensuousness from pictures of physical love to the pictures of
natural beauties. In ―Ode to a Nightingale‖ the poet looks for eternal beauty. The beauty of the
song of Nightingale is beautiful from time immemorial. It delights all people in all ages everywhere.
The Urn itself is a symbol of everlasting beauty. The painter may die but the beauty of the painting
is everlasting. The poet may die but poetry is undying.

In all his poems, the poet is Greek in temper and spirit. He is a representative of Greek thought
and culture in a sense in which Wordsworth, Shelley, Coleridge are not. In ―Ode to a Nightingale‖
there are references of Dryad, Hippocrene, Bacchus, Lethe- which remind us of Greek mythology.
The Urn itself is from Greek mythology. It immortalizes Greek joy, culture, religion. The Grecian
Urn shows the poet as the true representative of Greek, as the Urn outlives Greek culture. The Urn
is the beauty. It is as true as the Greek immortality.

Both poems show that escape from the real world is never possible. In ―Ode to the Nightingale‖ it is
the word ―forlorn‖ that puts the clock black. In the ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖ it is the realization of
the death like warmthless and speechless silence of the Urn that brings Keats back into the world
of reality.

The tone of ―Ode to Nightingale‖ is pathetic and it is more subjective than ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖.
The tone is joyous and objective in ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖. The overall tone of the poem is

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melancholic in ―Ode to Nightingale‖. The poem is also very subjective, because it draws reference
from Keats‘ own life. The expressions ―fever and fret‖ the ―spectre-thin‖ etc. clearly refer to the
pathetic death of Keats‘ brother. The poem is written immediately after the death of his brother. On
the other hand Keats‘ tone in ―Ode to Grecian Urn‖ is very joyful. Here he celebrates the beauty of
the Urn, the joyfulness of the lovers and the excitement of the religious sacrifice. He uses the word
―happy‖ several times. More importantly, unlike Nightingale, it is not based on his personal loss.
The poem was written after one of his visits to the British museum.

Keats is called least romantic of all the romantic poets. He uses all the elements of romantic poetry
like imagination, escape, love of the past, enjoyment of beauty, love of picturesque, sensuality,
spontaneous expression of feelings, experiment with form and theme, subjectivity, depiction of
nature, love of exotic, death wish, simplicity of language and expression. Yet we find great care of
a great classic poet in Keats‘ poetry. His balance is outstanding. Both odes carry all the qualities of
classic art as well as romantic art. It is this blend of romanticism and classicism which makes
Keats‘s poetry of everlasting appeal. And this blend is nowhere so prominent in Keats‘ poetry as
we find them in his great odes. This is the reason that critics say that Keats‘ odes were enough for
his greatness.

ODE TO AUTUMN: CRITICAL ANALYSIS

This poem was written in September, 1819. During an evening walk in Winchester, Keats was
greatly inspired by the beauty of autumn. He writes to John Hamilton Reynolds:

―How beautiful the season is now. How fine the air – a temperate sharpness about it really
without joking, chaste weather. I never liked stubble fields so much as now, eye better than
the chilly green of spring. Somehow, the stubble plain looks warm, in the same way that
some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday‘s walk that I composed
upon it.‖

"To Autumn” ranks among the finest poems of Keats. The treatment of the subject is perfectly
objective and impersonal. The poet keeps himself completely out of the picture. He only describes
certain sights and sounds expressing his personal reaction to them. This is a perfect Nature Lyric.

It is an ode that erases the blot of escapism from the face of Keats' poetry. Here Keats emerges
before us as an optimisticwho looks at life with vim and vigour and discovers the pleasure hidden
in the heart of apparently painful things. Autumn is usually associated with death, deprivation and
dejection. But Keats looks at it from a different angle and makes it a "Season of mists and
mellow fruitfulness."

Though spring, the season of hope, mirth and gaiety, has abundance of colours, sounds and
scenes, autumn is no less 'blissful' in this regard.

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In the first stanza, autumn has been personified and made to live. It has been presented as a
strong reproductive force. It is replete with images that suggest ripeness and abundance. The poet
gives us a description of the beauties and bounties of autumn and makes autumn a season of
fruitfulness and joyousness.

The second stanza opens with a rhetorical question which does not ask for a reply.

―......who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?"

But it stresses upon the point that

"Whoever seeks abroad may find thee......."

In the rest of the stanza autumn is personified as a goddess or spirit of plenty in four different
ways: first, as a winnower ―sitting careless on a granary floor‖; secondly as a reaper ―on a half-
reap‘d furrow sound asleep‖; thirdly, as a gleaner keeping ―steady thy laden head across a
brook‖; fourthly, as a spectator watching a cider-press squeezing juice out of fruit. This stanza
contains some of the most vivid imagery in English poetry. Keats‘ pictorial quality is here seen at its
best. The last stanza opens with a question designed to console autumn.

"Where are the songs of spring?

Ay, where are they?"

The joyful music of the spring cannot be heard in the autumn. But we should not grieve for it
because autumn has its own music: ―wailful choir the small gnats mourn‖; ―lambs loud bleat‖;
―hedge-crickets sing‖; ―red-breast whistles‖; ―swallows twitter‖. Though the autumn songs
are sad, yet are very charming to the listener. The close of the ode, though solemn, breathes the
spirit of hope, the individual year may be drawing to a close but there will be new year to take its
place. This idea is conveyed by the last line, and gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

To Autumn is the last and most faultless of Keats odes. From the point of view of perfection, it
claims the highest place among all other odes of Keats. It is an unparalleled description of a richly
beautiful autumn day. The first stanza gives us the bounty of Autumn, the second describes the
occupations of the season, and the last dwells upon its sounds. Indeed, the poem is a complete
and concrete picture of autumn.

It has already been mentioned that "To Autumn' is a purely objective poem. The poet himself is
completely absent from it. There is no ‘l' and no suggestion that we find in the other odes. The
other odes of 1819 are complex and passionate. But this ode is calm and quiet and breathes an air
of happy contentment which is not always present in Keats' work. There is no pathos of the
Nightingale, no philosophy as in the "Grecian Urn" and no allegory as in the "Ode on Melancholy".

The poem breathes the spirit of hope and zest. The thought of the end of the year-ripeness going
towards decay, does not lead the poet to sadness or disappointment. Keats is not bothered by the

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fever and fret of this life. He is not disturbed by any romantic longing or classic aspiration. He does
not pine for what is not. Nor does he regret for the spring that is gone. Though the old question
raises its head in the last stanza, "Where are the songs of spring?", the poet silences it
immediately and describes the peculiar music of autumn season itself.

The main theme of the Ode is 'Ripeness in all'. The poet says that in the autumn season
everything comes to maturity, thoughmaturity is followed by inevitable decay. But in this ode, Keats
is not dejected and disappointed at this. No doubt, Keats has always felt sad at the thought that
beauty is transient and temporary. But in the "Ode to Autumn" he accepts impermanence without
sadness, for he sees it as part of a larger and richer permanence.

Keats' Hellenism is also very much apparent in this poem. This poem shows Greek spirit and
Greek way of writing more than any other poem in English language. It is a classical ode in English
language. There is no romantic mystery or emotional agitation in it. Everything here is simple,
clear, vivid and calm. But throughout the poem a mood of serious / serene tranquility prevails.
Moreover the living personifications of autumn are exactly in the myth – making mode of the
ancient Greek. It can be termed as a nature - lyric.

Keats' sensuousness also finds its perfect expression in this poem. There are a number of
beautiful and vivid descriptions of the beauties of sight and sound for example, 'The barred
clouds blooming' 'The soft – dying day' 'the lambs bleating loudly'. There is also a feast of
colours in the poem.

All this helps in giving a vivid picture of the various beauties of the autumn season. The poem is
short, faultless in its art and workmanship. It shows at their best all the qualities of Keats' poetic art,
his pictorial power, his economy of expression, his classical restraint, his sense of proportion and
his grave and solemn music.

KEATS’ NEGATIVE CAPABILITY

Negative Capability was first used by John Keats in 1818 to explain a capacity that negates
intellectual pursuit of mysterious answers.The concept of Negative Capability is the ability to
contemplate the world without the desire to try and reconcile its contradictory aspects or
understand them through reason.Keats wants to find beauty in what is an ugly world.
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In a letter to his brothers, George and Thomas Keats, on 21 December 1817, Keats used the
phrase Negative Capability for the only time.

―… at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in

Literature, and whichShakespeare possessed so enormously - I mean Negative Capability,
that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any
irritable reaching after fact and reason.‖
What does Keats mean by ‗Negative Capability’? Actually he is using the word ‗negative‘ not in a
negative sense, but to convey the idea that a person‘s potential can be defined by what he or she
does not possess. According to Keats, poetry should be the result of a poet‘s Negative Capability
which means to be capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries or doubts and to be free of ―any
irritable reaching out after fact and reason.‖ Such a position put Keats at the forefront of
the Romantic movement, and even at the cusp of modernism.

Through the example of Coleridge, Keats himself has explained the meaning of his statement.

―Coleridge, for instance …being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge, …that
with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration.‖

Stephen Hebron comments on the remarks of Keats about Coleridge:

―Essential to literary achievementis a certain passivity, a willingness to let what is

mysterious or doubtful remain just that. Coleridgewould do well to break off from his
relentless search for knowledge, and instead contemplate something beautiful and true
from the most secret part of mystery. The experience and intuitive appreciation of the
beautiful is central to poetic talent, and renders irrelevant anything that is arrived at through
reason.‖
So the Negative Capability is the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and make
peace with ambiguity. Keats wants to accept the every aspect of world from disappointment and
disgust to exaltation and serenity.Hecondemns Coleridge for searching for a single, higher-order
truth or solution to the mysteries of the natural world. He went on to find the same fault in Dilke and
Wordsworth. He claimed that all these poets lacked objectivity and universality in their view of the
human condition and the natural world.

The origin of the term is unknown, but some scholars have claimed that Keats was influenced in
his studies of medicine and chemistry, and that it refers to the negative pole of an electric
current which is passive and receptive. In the same way that the negative pole receives the current
from the positive pole, the poet receives impulses from a world that is full of mystery and doubt,
which cannot be explained but which the poet can translate into art.

This concept of Negative Capability is a rejection of set philosophies of nature. Keats says that the
poet must be receptive rather than searching for fact or reason, and to not seek absolute
knowledge of every truth, mystery, or doubt. The most beautiful experience we can have is the
mysterious. In order to create true poetry, one had to be able to remain in state of conflict without
'irritably' reaching after facts or reasons. The poet should not impose himself upon the doubts and
uncertainties which make up a conflict.This concept of Negative Capability is closely related to

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Keats‘ concept of beauty and truth. The inspirational power of beauty is more important than the
quest for objective fact; as he writes in his ―Ode on a Grecian Urn‖:

―‗Beauty is truth, truth beauty—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.‖
Negative Capability is not just denying the need for correct answers, but denying humanity‘s ability
to fully understand any kind of phenomena. In other words, Keats says that for some things, those
correct answers might not be available. In fact, they might not exist at all.Keats was seen as
rejecting the Enlightenment‘s attempts to rationalize nature, and by doing so, he ended up at the
forefront of the Romantic Movement.

Keats thinks that a poet is succeeded if he is able to share with his readers what he has
experienced. He should inspire the reader to such an extent that the reader blindly starts following
the poet and forgets his miseries. It is the duty of the poet to remove his ego from his work. He
says,

―A poet is the most unpoetical of anything because he has no identity.‖

In ‗Ode to a Nightimgale’, we see that Keats is himself the victim of ―drowsy numbness‖ but he
comes out of himself to enter into the ecstasy of the nightingale‘s song. He becomes,

―Too happy in thine happiness.‖

In ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, Keats is fully aware of the temporariness of human life. But he even
takes joy in ‗unheard melodies‘ because:

―Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter.‖
The finest example of Keats‘ Negative Capability is to be found in ‗Ode to Autumn’. Almost all the
literary tradition holds this season to be a symbol of decay and decline. Whereas Keats sees it as
a ―season of mellow fruitfulness‖. The cruel fact of winter is not forgotten. Rather it is placed in
wider perspective and thus loses its destructive effects. This is how he arrives his concept of truth
and beauty through the medium of Negative Capability.

This discussion on Keats‘s Negative Capability can be concluded well with the remarks of a critic,
Allen Somervell:

―The excellence ofevery art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate,
from their being in close relationship with beauty and truth.‖

ESCAPISM OF KEATS
CONTRAST BETWEEN REALITY AND IMAGINATION
CONTRAST BETWEEN ART AND REALITY
―Keats‘ poetry puts man‘s mind exactly where it should be – on a delicate balance, below
which it cannot descend; beyond where it has no will to rise.‖ In the light of this statement,
critically evaluate Keats‘s odes. (2005)

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The sharp contrast between the desire for beauty and awareness of pain makes Keats‘ odes
dramatic. Discuss. (2006)

How does the dramatic spirit express itself in the odes of Keats? (2013)

Keats‘ odes reflect his constraint vision. The poems show the poet trying to resolve the
conflict between happiness and melancholy, flux and stasis, art and life, life and death with
a brilliant artistic force. (2013 Sup)

The Odes are a remarkable record of Keats’ struggle towards a vision that would
comprehend all experience, joy and suffering, the natural and the ideal, the transient and
the eternal. Discuss.

All the Odes of Keats are closely bound up with the theme of transience and permanence.
Elaborate.

In the great Odes, Keats explores the relation between pleasure and pain, happiness and
melancholy, imagination and reality, art and life, with brilliant poetic force. Discuss.

Keats’ Odes grow directly out of inner conflicts. Explain.

How does Keats treat desire and fulfillment?

The odes of Keats deal basically with some of the conflicts and inner struggles that troubled him.
These conflicts give to his odes a dramatic quality. The odes of Keats are dramatic in the sense
that they arise from certain basic conflicts and are based on certain contrasts. The chief conflict is
between the real world and the ideal world. They also imply the opposition between pleasure and
pain, imagination and reason, permanence and transience, Nature and the human beings, art and
life, freedom and bondage, waking and dream.

Keats is always trying to escape to the world of imagination, the world of beauty, such as the world
of the nightingale or the Grecian urn. But his escape is always obstructed by a painful realization of
the actualities of life. This sharp contrast between the desire for beauty and awareness of pain
makes Keats‘ odes dramatic. Keats‘ almost all odes reveal this conflict in one way or the other.

Keats‘ Odes grow directly out of inner conflicts, which give rise to his escaping tendency from the
real world to an imaginative world. When does Keats think of escaping from the reality of his life? Is
there any particular time? – Yes. Keats‘ life-long creed is ‗A thing of beauty is a joy for ever‘
(Endymion).Unlike other romantic poets, he does not make his poetry a vehicle of any prophecy
or message. It has no moral, political and social significance. The major characteristic of his poetry
is an unending pursuit of beauty. He had no interest in the world outside. Stopford Brook says,

―Keats was so pre-occupied with beauty that he turned an blind eye to the actualities of life
around him.‖

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Experiencing the bitter realities of life, wherever he sees some beautiful pictures whether depicted
on an ‗Urn‘ or hears the song of a ‗Nightingale‘, he tries to fly to an ideal world of happiness,
beauty, music and imagination forgetting his reality in the world.Keats always struggles towards a
vision that would comprehend all experience, joy and suffering, the natural and the ideal, the
transient and the eternal.

In Ode to a Nightingale, the ‗draught of vintage‘symbolizes an imaginative escape from reality.

The desire to ‗fade away into the forest dim‘ results from the desire of another fading away,
namely, the physical decay. In the third stanza, the actual world of distress and privation is
described. The actual world is the world of ‗weariness, the fever, and the fret‘. The transitory
nature of this actual world has been described in these words:

―Here, where men sit and hear each other groan;

Where palsy shakes a few, sad, last gay hairs,

Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies.‖

We see that Keats is so disgusted with the real life that he always tries to escape from it. This
picture of the actual world is in direct opposition to the ecstasy of the nightingale‘s song. In this
ode, Keats affirms the value of the ideal and beauty, but he also recognizes the power of the
actual. He feels agonized by the sharp difference between them.The sharp contrast between the
desire for beauty and awareness of pain makes Keats‘ odes dramatic.

How does Keats escape from reality? What is his medium or transport? Keats‘ own words give
answer to these questions:

―Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards

But on the viewless wings of poesy.‖
Keats‘ escape is from his real life to an imaginative and ideal world. But why is this escape?
Because, according to Keats, reality of human life is full of suffering, pain etc; this world is not a
desirable place. ‗Ode to a Nightingale’ is an excellent example of Keats‘ escapism and inner
conflict.

But Keats‘ world of imagination remains only a short while. In his imagination, the moments of pure
happiness do not last long; he is to come back to this world again. When he thinks that the Urn and
the song of the nightingale will remain for ages but he will not, rather he is ‗forlorn‘, he comes back
to reality. He says in the last stanza of ‗Ode to a Nightingale’:

―Forlorn! The very would is like a bell

To toll me back from thee to my sole self‖.
The word ‗forlorn‘ reminds him his position in the real world, like the alarm clocks that turn us from
our dreamy sleep to the world of bitter reality. He calls his imaginative escape ‗fancy‘, ‗deceiving
elf‘.He discovers that his imagination cannot provide him with a lasting escape from the actual
world. This conflict introduces several tensions in the poem, making it highly dramatic. The desire
to escape to the world of eternal beauty and joy ends in failure.
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Keats‘ odes reflect his constraint vision. The poems show his trying to resolve the conflict between
happiness and melancholy, flux and stasis, art and life, life and death with a brilliant artistic force.
The Grecian Urn as a piece of Greek art, very much like the Nightingale, has a monumental value.
It is immortal because it is a substitute for the miserable world of reality. The Ode on a Grecian Urn
gives us a contrast between something unchanging (the urn) because it is dead, and something
transient because it is alive. The lifeless permanence is superior to transient reality. Keats knows
the limitation of his imaginative escape to world of things like the Urn or the Nightingale. He
realizes that the speechless Urn will remain ‘forlorn’ like the Nightingale. Thus he comes back on
the hard crust of earth on which every man lives.

To conclude, we can claim unhesitatingly that Keats, after escaping into the world of beauty and
permanence, finds himself compelled to return to the real world of impermanence and suffering.
He derives the conclusion that true beauty consists not in an escape from this world but in an
acceptance of it. We can sum up this discussion with the concise statement of a critic:

―Keats‘ poetry puts man‘s mind exactly where it should be – on a delicate balance, below
which it cannot descend; beyond where it has no will to rise.‖

KEATS’ AS A ROMANTIC/PURE POET

KEATS AS A POET OF BEAUTY/NATURE
The overwhelming passion and theme of Keats‘ poetry is beauty. He pursues and loves the
principle of beauty in all the things of Nature. Hence, among all the romantic poets, he is the pure
poet. It is because he is neither a teacher, nor a preacher, nor a reformer, nor a carrier of any
message of humanitarianism or spiritualism. Middleton Murry says,

―Keats had the persistent capacity to see and to feel what life is. That‘s why, he equally
loved both foul and fair, joy and sorrow, mean and noble alike.‖

Keats is not only a pure poet but a pure romantic as well. As a romantic poet, he was greatly
inspired by the Greek art and culture. He was also inspired by the Elizabethans, especially
Spenser. Keats is a true romantic poet and makes poetry an instrument for the expression of his
personal and emotional feelings. His poetry has no didacticism (moral teachings) like Wordsworth
neither it has revolutionist approach like Shelley. Riddley Scott says,

―Keats feels the impression of beauty on his pulses and breathes it into poetry.‖

Keats romanticizes beauty in various aspects of life. Thus, the pursuit of beauty becomes his life-
long creed. He reaches at the reality of things through the medium of beauty. In this context,
Compton Rickett says,

―Keats had no religion save the religion of beauty.‖

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As a pure poet, the dominant theme of all Keats‘ poems is beauty. Unlike the other romantic poets
of his age, he did not take notice of the social, political and literary turmoil but devoted himself
entirely to the worship of beauty. He himself says,

―With a great poet, the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration.‖

A pure poet feels and expresses his joy in beauty, but when he feels this joy, he realizes also a
new aspect of beauty, which is truth. In this identity of beauty and truth, lies the harmony of
universe. Keats realizes this harmony when he says;

―Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that‘s all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.‖
Love for nature is the chief characteristic of all the romantic and pure poets. Keats also loves

nature but he loves nature for the sake of nature. He does not give any theory or ideology about

nature. He only admires the beauty of nature. But on the other hand, Wordsworth spiritualizes

nature, Coleridge finds some supernatural elements in nature, Shelley intellectualizes nature and

Byron is interested in the vigorous aspects of nature.

Keats was a pure poet as he does not project any theory in his poetry. He believes in Negative
Capability.Negative Capability is the willingness to embrace uncertainty, live with mystery, and
make peace with ambiguity. Keats wants to accept the every aspect of world from disappointment
and disgust to exaltation and serenity. So most of Keats‘ poetry is devoted to love, pathos,
disappointment in love, and loss of beauty and joy. Where is then beauty in life? Actually he
realizes the truth of life after passing through his agonies. Pain and suffering cannot be divorced
from joy as they together make up life just like day and night together make up time.

―Wordsworth and Shelley both had theories but Keats has none. We cannot accuse Keats
of any withdrawal or refusal; he was merely about his business and his business was that
of a pure poet.‖
A very significant element which one finds in Keats‘ poetry, and in other romantics, is more or less
a desire for escape. Romantic poetry presents the world of dreams and imagination; therefore, the
romantic poets seek an escape from the hard realities of life in the world of imagination. As Keats
says in ‘Ode to a Nighingale’:

―Away! Away! For I will fly to thee,

Bot charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of poesy.‖
Keats was extra ordinarily endowed with the native ability of feeling acutely with senses like
Shakespeare and Milton. All his five senses react quickly to the beauties of external world. Thus
sense impression of these beauties is transmitted into poetry by his imagination. In ‘Ode to
Autumn’, he describes the sensuous beauty of the season but his tone is of joy mixed with
solemnity of thought.

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Keats poetry reveals the sensuous aspect of his love for beauty. His expression of beauty is not
only sensuous but also romantic. The poem ‗Endymion‘ begin with the utterance of romantic
poetry.

―A thing of beauty is a joy forever,

Its loveliness increases, it will never pass into nothingness.‖
Keats saw that life was full of pains, sufferings and melancholy. Even he himself was a prey to pain
and disease. His poetry is coloured with melancholy. In ‘Ode to a Nighingale’, there is poignant
note of melancholy when he says,

―Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And laden-eyed despairs;
Where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes;
Or new love pine at them beyond tomorrow.‖
Concluding it, Keats possesses the qualities of a romantic and pure poet who loves nature, which
is seen by him with Greek temper. He never thinks about past and future and his only concern is
the present time; the present moment of beauty and truth. In his early poetry, one can perceive him
as an escapist because there was joy and delight and overcharged imagination because of
inexperience youth. But with gradual development of thought and experience, he comes to the
conclusion that sorrows and joys are always together; rose cannot be taken without its thrones.
One can clearly sees in his Odes that he is not an escapist but he is accepting the realities of life.
Tennyson says,

―There is something of the innermost soul of poetry in almost everything he wrote.‖

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