Ode

Odes have been used throughout time to entertain, engage, inspire, celebrate, and explore. This ranges from odes written by Pindar a classical poet from ancient Greece to odes written in the 19th and 20th century by female poets such as Emily Brontë and Sylvia Plath. The ode is first and foremost a poem that consists of a subject or object being addressed by a narrator; usually the poet themselves. The imperative ‘must’ in the question suggests that the grandness of the ode is necessary for it to be considered an ode and connotations of the word ‘grand’ propose that the ode must endure a feeling of magnificence, spectacle, and importance. Walker’s quote ‘We have constantly looked high, when we should have looked high – and low’ demonstrates…

of time is viewed by poets as one of two things: either time is fleeting or time is eternal. Those who recognize the former see the passage of time as destined to occur as well as an end; whereas, those who recognize the latter have the mindset that time will never give way to an end. Poet John Keats, a proponent of the former viewpoint, carries the centralized idea of time throughout his works in order to illustrate the passage of time and the arrival of death as an inevitable event. In his…

Ode is instead a work of melancholic introspection, questioning the nature of death - indeed, the narrator imagines himself to be dead, as the sod (i.e. earth) beneath the singing nightingale (citation). This interpretation of the poem becomes even more apparent when it is considered that at least part of Keats’ poem has its origins in a twenty-line section from The Pleasures of Melancholy (citation), by Thomas Warton - the same section even contains the line: “Is there a pleasure like the…

In Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and in Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” both authors create different perspectives of a singular object, a Grecian Urn and a Blackbird, as a focus to highlight their individual style and form while also articulating various meanings of that singular object. However, Keats uses these variations of the Grecian Urn to exemplify his romantic style by constructing longer stanzas that paint entire images and emphasize emotions generated from that…

A native of London, England, John Keats was born on October 31, 1795 and devoted his life to poetry marked by his bright use of imagery, sensuous appeal and philosophical ideas. Although his life and writing career of less than six years was very short-lived, his poetic achievements are extraordinary. Keats believed that reality is determined by knowledge. Therefore, most of his poems stem from internal conflicts. Several of his great works including “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian…

Although having lived a very short life, John Keats is arguably one of the most remarkable poets that the Romantic Era produced. His poetry explores the human condition by asking deep philosophic questions. Written in 1819, the poem ”Ode on Melancholy," captures many complex emotions, and focuses on the intertwined connection between joy and sadness, hope and disappointment. He reasons that in order to fully experience and appreciate one, we must also experience the other. Only if we can truly…

Based upon the conversation poems “Ode to a Nightingale” by John Keats and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the extent to which poetry and perception resolve isolation captivated the two Romantic poets, permeating their work. While through their respective poems both Keats and Coleridge explore the power of poetry to transport, Coleridge’s speaker experiences a journey that renews his appreciation for nature and others around him, while Keats ends his journey in…

Shakespeare’s sonnet 110 describes the importance of true love, from a perspective of a person who lost love. The poem is written with iambic pentameter with regretful, yet repentant tone. Along with the shift of the focus, Shakespeare uses melancholic diction, juxtaposition, and connotation to effectively emphasize the regret of letting go of the true love, although it is too late. In the first quatrain, Shakespeare carefully picks words with negative connotation to create the remorseful tone…

Ode to Moleskine I sometimes feel I was born out of time; I should've been a scribe in the middle ages when royalty valued such skills but would in all probability, end up beheaded for my insolence. A friend introduced me to an associate photo studio owner In the summer of 2008, where I was presented with the opportunity to get serious about photography. Her business was centered on models that weren't entirely cut out for agency work and needed photographers to put them in their best light. ─…

In 1819, at the age of twenty-four, Keats used his passion for Shakespearean literature to create many revolutionary poems, including: Ode to a Nightingale. This poem was one of many that Keats wrote that expresses a tone of longing for an ending and for something more than the world possess. John Keats creates a tone of suffering in the Ode to a Nightingale by confronting the nightingale with a longing for the happiness that the creature expresses; this is how the tone of John Keats influences…