The human mind is an incredible piece of artistry. It can calculate the finest of details instantly, create breath-taking works of art, and allows us to understand the great sorrows of Earth. The mind can grant insight into reality and allows for the ability to feel happiness well as pain and grief, “for there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so” (Hamlet 2.2). This complex paradox, between awareness through knowledge and ignorance, is explored by both Donald Justice in his Italian sonnet, “The Wall”, and John Keats’s poem, “Ode to a Nightingale”. In their works this is accomplished through careful choice of poetic form, the use of analogies that define the boundary between knowledge and ignorance, and dream or sleep imagery. These poems exemplify that the concept of thought and understanding are both humankind’s greatest strength as well as its greatest weakness.
Similar to any other artist, the poet utilizes the elements of the physical realm to actualize abstract …show more content…
In “Ode to a Nightingale” the speaker attempts to encompass the mythical beauty of a nightingale he is observing and believes that he can free himself of the world and join the bird using the “wings of Poesy” (Keats 33). However, the thoughtful and rigid form of the ode, known for superfluous descriptions, is exemplified by his artificial description of how “haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, /Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays” (Keats 36-37). These lines expose the speaker’s ultimate inability to lose himself in the nightingale’s world since his only conduit is through a language that only further chains him to Earth. Although Keats and Justice use different poetic forms, both claim their weaknesses as strengths in order to reveal an underlying paradox of whether a paradise can exist for humans capable of free will and
Similar to any other artist, the poet utilizes the elements of the physical realm to actualize abstract …show more content…
In “Ode to a Nightingale” the speaker attempts to encompass the mythical beauty of a nightingale he is observing and believes that he can free himself of the world and join the bird using the “wings of Poesy” (Keats 33). However, the thoughtful and rigid form of the ode, known for superfluous descriptions, is exemplified by his artificial description of how “haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne, /Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays” (Keats 36-37). These lines expose the speaker’s ultimate inability to lose himself in the nightingale’s world since his only conduit is through a language that only further chains him to Earth. Although Keats and Justice use different poetic forms, both claim their weaknesses as strengths in order to reveal an underlying paradox of whether a paradise can exist for humans capable of free will and