Ode To A Romantic Poem Analysis

Ode to a Romantic Poet: A Discussion of Keats’ Grecian Urn “A thing of beauty is a joy forever: its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness.” – John Keats The Romantic Movement began as a balm to ease the pain and fear the Industrial revolution brought through its technological advancement and praise of science. One of its greatest writers, John Keats, rebelled from other forms of romantic writing to pave a new way for poetry. While Keats was an avid reader of Wordsworth, he found fault with his predecessor’s style of writing, calling it the “egotistical sublime” (405). He argued that Wordsworth focused too much on the self, when there was much more to discuss through poetry. Keats then embraced the notion of being a “chameleon poet,” one who does not have an “identity, but takes delight in things other than himself” (405). By analyzing the second stanza of “Ode to a Grecian Urn,” one can see how he became the “chameleon poet,” through his imaginative exploration into the life of the Greek artifact (405). As is shown by the quote above, Keats found that anything of beauty possesses immortality – a theme he was quite taken with. For in his poem, the beautiful depictions of men, women, and nature have captured eternal life, simply through the longevity of …show more content…
This only cements the previous notion that these pipes are not heard physically, but experienced in the imagination. Just as the sight of an instrument would evoke a feeling associated with the sound, and your mind would then begin creating a melody to match it. The pipes are also described in the next line as “spirit ditties of no tone:” (line 14). Here he is calling the pipes ghostly or ethereal, as a song that has “no tone,” because it does not exist in this realm. Keats is truly engrossed in this fantasy, as he reconstructs every detail of the urn through his