Post your reflections on John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode to a Nightingale,” and “To Autumn” here.

3 thoughts on “Keats’s Odes”

  1. In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker is looking at the pictures on an Urn and describes what he sees. In the first stanza, he seems to be talking to the Urn itself and personifies the Urn by calling it the “foster-child of silence and slow time,” meaning that it is the product of a slow and silent process. He then asks a series of questions about the Urn because he is curious as to what the pictures mean and the stories behind it. In the second and third stanza, he looks at a picture and sees a couple under a tree. During this section, the speaker feels that the lovers should not be sad since they are frozen in time and can never kiss, but rather be happy because their love is frozen in time, therefore lasting forever. In addition to this, the speaker seems to be sad of his mortality; he is jealous of the everlasting, frozen love between the young couple and says how there is pain in love between breathing humans “That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed/A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.” (29-30). In the fourth stanza, the speaker is looking at another picture where a sacrafice is happening. He seems to be confused as to where all the people are since the town “Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?”(37). In the last stanza, he refers back to the Urn, saying how as time goes back and each generation dies, the Urn will continue to live on to tell its tales.
    In this poem, the speaker is jealous of the immortality of the Urn and the stories that lay within the pictures. Here is my question for you:
    (1)If given a choice, would you rather stay in a captured moment in time where the love between you and your partner is frozen, forever lasting, or would you embrace your mortality and accept the short-lived love we humans experience before our inevitable deaths?

    In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the theme of mortality is also brought up. The poem begins with the line “My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains,” which sets the mood and tone of the poem. We learn that the speaker is sleepy and drunk, which gives the possibility that the entire poem is just a dream. In the third stanza, he critizes mortality by saying how the old suffer and that the young die, showing how weak humans are. In the sixth stanza, he gets into a more depressed state and starts talking about how he wishes to die with no pain or worries, which shows that he might be somewhat suicidal in his drunken/sleepy state. In the seventh stanza, he brings up that the Nightingale is an immortal bird because its songs will be passed down for generations. Finally in the last stanza, he seems to regain consciousness and questions whether everything was a dream “do I wake or sleep?”(80). I feel that this all could’ve been a vision or a dream because in the beginning of the poem, the narrator mentions how he is drowsy, as well as drunk, and he also mentions how he might’ve taken some opiates.
    This poem is about Keats questioning whether the experience with the Nightingale actually happened or he just dreamt it. Here is my question for you:
    (2) Have you ever had a moment where you can’t tell if a memory is real or from a dream? Do you think the speaker dreamt of the Nightingale or do you think that his experience was real?

    In the poem “To Autumn,” the speaker shows his appreciation for Autumn. In the first stanza, he describes what’s going on during the season; fruits ripening, bees going from flower to flower, apple trees and fruits on vines. In the second stanza, the speaker personifies Autumn by saying how you can find him/her sitting on a granary floor, asleep on a field with poppies and flowers. In the third stanza, the speaker describes the music of Autumn, the “wailful choir the small gnats mourn . . . full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn . . . hedge-crickets sing . . . red-breast whistles”(27-32).
    This passage is mainly about how the speaker feels about Autumn. He seems to enjoy it so much that he personifies it and gives it life, and even describes how it sounds like. Here’s my question for you:
    (3) How would you describe Autumn? Do you agree with the speaker that it is a season where nature is busy and beautiful at the same time?

    1. 1) If I were given the choice, I would embrace my mortality and accept the short-lived love we humans experience before our inevitable deaths. This is because I wouldn’t want to just enjoy one captured moment in time of forever lasting love because there are many other types of joy and experiences out there as well, on top of it. I would rather have life progress so that I am able to capture many memories throughout my life that I will enjoy and may enjoy just as much as the moment of forever lasting love.
      2) I have had several moments before where I could not tell if a memory was real or from a dream. It was something small like thinking that I had a certain conversation with someone, but in reality, I didn’t and where I thought I did something, but I actually didn’t. I think the experience the speaker had was somewhat real. Since he seemed to be in a drunken state, I think that something along the lines of what he said may have happened, while some of it may have been exaggerated or imagined while being awake in a drunken/drowsy state.
      3) I would describe Autumn as very colorful and breezy. I agree with the speaker that Autumn is a season where nature is busy and beautiful at the same time. During Autumn, many things happen such as change of color of leaves, leaves falling, and fruits ripening, as the speaker said. Autumn is a beautiful process and part of nature where the surrounding changes into something else unlike the other seasons.

  2. In Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats depicts a truly devastating approach to picking apart the complexities of our duality as human beings. Keats exposes the human duality or dual state of mind that we have fallen too since the dawn of our creation. In this poem, Keats is comparing the ideal world that we hold so dear to the perilous and capricious real world. “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”, this quote does a great job of portraying Keats’ message in a clever and subtle way. Keats is implying that while heard melodies are great the unheard or ‘ideal’ melody is always sweeter (11). He elaborates on this idea further by saying “therefore, ye soft pipes, play on”, as if he is talking to the urn and telling the reader that death is the ideal state of life (12). The idea of ideal vs. reality shows up in Ode to a Nightingale as well. In Ode to a Nightingale Keats is performing a verbal dance with death, romanticizing death and idealizing its effect on his life. This idea is made abundantly clear in stanza VI where Keats writes “I listen; and for many a time I have been half in love with easeful death, called him soft names in many a mused rhyme, To take into the air my quiet breath” (51). This idealization is nothing more than a dream which is not reality for most people. Keats is falling into his own idealization of reality. Keats also writes “Where but to think is to be full of sorrow and leaden eyes despair” (27). To me, this quote brings up a common phrase “ignorance is bliss”. Keats is comparing the idealization of knowledge making one happy and content with life with the general reality that all the knowledge in the world is bound to make one senseless with guilt and sorrow. To Autumn is an interesting piece because Keats picks the season where plants die, animals begin to hibernate, and life starts to pack up its bags for the winter. He is continuing his romantic fling with death exploring its applications beyond our lives. “Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they? Think not of them, thou hast thy music too”, Keats brings up the idea of an unheard melody again because “the unheard melody is always sweeter”, and the one you hear isn’t. In this last stanza Keats is talking about the heard melody of the “wailful choir”, and the “red-breast whistles from a garden-croft”. The last stanza of the poem depicts a scene that is less similar to the fall and more to a funeral in my opinion. This idea connects to the reality of the fall and reality of the heard melody, they both are connected to death.

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