John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn"

John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn"AnalysisStanza I.Stanza I begins slowly, asks questions arising from thought and raises abstract concepts such as time and art. The comparison of the urn to an "unravish'd bride" functions at a number of levels. It prepares for the impossibility of the fulfillment of stanza II and for the violence of lines 8-10 of this stanza. "Still" embodies two concepts--time and motion--which appear in a number of ways in the rest of the poem. They appear immediately in line 2 with the urn as a "foster" child. The urn exists in the real world, which is mutable or subject to time and change, yet it and the life it presents are unchanging; hence, the bride is "unravish'd" and as a "foster" child, the urn is touched by "slow time," not the time of the real world. The figures carved on the urn are not subject to time, though the urn may be changed or affected over slow time.
The urn as "sylvan historian" speaks to the viewer, even if it doesn't answer the poet's questions (stanzas I and IV). Whether the urn communicates a message depends on how you interpret the final stanza. The urn is "sylvan"--first, because a border of leaves encircles the vase and second because the scene carved on the urn is set in woods. The "flowery tale" told "sweetly" and "Sylvan historian" do not prepare for the terror and wild sexuality unleashed in lines 8-10 (another opposition); the effect and the subject of the urn or art conflict. Is it paradoxical that the urn, which is silent, tells tales "more sweetly than our rime"? Twice (lines 6 and 8) the poet is unable to distinguish between mortal and immortal, men and gods, another opposition; is there a suggestion of coexistence and inseparableness in this blurring of differences between them?
With lines 8-10, the poet is caught up in the excited, rapid activities depicted on the urn and moves from observer to participant in the life on the urn, in the sense that he is emotionally involved. Paradoxically, turbulent dynamic passion is convincingly portrayed on cold, motionless stone.Paradox and opposites run through the rest of the poem. As you read and reread the poem, you should become aware of them.


Stanza II.The first four lines contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature) and the real; which does Keats prefer at this point? What is the paradox of unheard pipes? Is this an oxymoron?The last six lines contrast the drawback of frozen time; note the negative phrasing: "canst not leave," "nor ever can," "never, never canst" in lines 5-8. Keats says not to grieve; whom he is addressing--the carved figures or the reader? or both? Then he lists the advantages of frozen time; however, Keats continues to use negative phrasing even in these lines: "do not grieve," "cannot fade," and ""hast, not thy bliss." Keats may have made a mistake, or there may be a reason for this negative undertone, a reason which will become clear as the poem continues.

Stanza III.This stanza recapitulates ideas from the preceding two stanzas and re-introduces some figures: the trees which can't shed leaves, the musician, and the lover. Keats portrays the ideal life on the urn as one without disappointment and suffering. The urn-depicted passion may be human, but it is also "all breathing passion far above" because it is unchanging. Is there irony in the fact that the superior passion depicted on the urn is also unfulfillable, that satisfaction is impossible?How does he portray real life, actual passion in the last three lines? Which is preferable, the urn life or real life? Note the repetition of the word "happy." Is there irony in this situation?
Stanza IV.Stanza IV shows the ability of art to stir the imagination so that the viewer sees more than is portrayed. The poet imagines the village from which the people on the urn came. In this stanza, the poet begins to withdraw from his emotional participation in and identification with life on the urn.This stanza focuses on communal life (the previous stanzas described individuals). What paradox is implicit in the contrast between the event being a sacrifice and the altar being "green"? between leading the heifer to the sacrifice and her "silken flanks with garlands drest"?In imagining an empty town, why does he give three possible locations for the town, rather than fix on one location? Why does he use the word "folk," rather than "people"? Think about the different connotations of these words. The image of the silent, desolate town embodies both pain and joy. How is it ironic that not a soul can tell us why the town is empty and that the vase communicates so much to the poet and so to the reader? Is this also paradoxical?In terms of the theme of pain-joy, what is Keats saying in lines 1-4, which describe the procession? in the rest of the stanza which describes the desolate town? Is he describing a temporary or a permanent condition?Is the viewer, who is the poet as well as the reader, pulled into the world of the urn?
Stanza V.The poet observes the urn as a whole and remembers his vision. Is he emotionally involved in the life of the urn at this point, or is he again the observer? What aspect of the urn is stressed in the phrases "marble men and maidens," "silent form," and "Cold Pastoral"?Is there a paradox in the phrase "Cold Pastoral"?Yet the poet did experience the life experienced on the urn and comments, ambiguously perhaps, that the urn "dost tease us out of thought / As doth eternity." Is this another reference to the "dull brain" which "perplexes and retards" ("Ode to a Nightingale")? Why does Keats use the word "tease"? By teasing him "out of thought," did the urn draw him from the real world into an ideal world, where, if there was neither imperfection nor change, there was also no real life or fulfillment? Or, possibly, was the poet so involved in the life of the urn that he couldn't think? Was the urn an escape, however temporary, from the pains and problems of life? One thing that all these suggestions mean is that this is a puzzling line.In the final couplet, is Keats saying that pain is beautiful? You must decide whether it is the poet (a persona), Keats (the actual poet), or the urn speaking. Are both lines spoken by the same person, or do some of the quotation express the view of one speaker and the rest of the couplet express the comment upon that view by another speaker? Who is being addressed--the poet, the urn, or the reader? Are the concluding lines a philosophical statement about life or do they make sense only in the context of the poem? Click here to read the three versions of the last two lines.Some critics feel that Keats is saying that Art is superior to Nature. Is Keats thinking or feeling or talking about the urn only as a work of art? Your reading on this issue will be affected by your decision about who is speaking.No matter how you read the last two lines, do they really mean anything? do they merely sound as if they mean something? or do they speak to some deep part of us that apprehends or feels the meaning but it is an experience/meaning that can't be put into words? Do they make a final statement on the relation of the ideal to the actual? Is the urn rejected at the end? Is art--can art ever be--a substitute for real life?What, if anything, has the poet learned from his imaginative vision of or daydream participation in the life of the urn?

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john Keats" Ode to a Nightingale"

john Keats" Ode to a Nightingale"

Form
Like most of the other odes, "Ode to a Nightingale" is written in ten-line stanzas. However, unlike most of the other poems, it is metrically variable--though not so much as "Ode to Psyche." 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. "Nightingale" 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 except "To Psyche," which has the loosest structure of all the odes). Each stanza in "Nightingale" is rhymed ABABCDECDE, Keats's most basic scheme throughout the odes.
Themes
With "Ode to a Nightingale," Keats's speaker begins his fullest and deepest exploration of the themes of creative expression and the mortality of human life. In this ode, the transience of life and the tragedy of old age ("where palsy shakes a few, sad, last grey hairs, / Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies") is set against the eternal renewal of the nightingale's fluid music ("Thou wast not born for death, immortal bird!"). The speaker reprises the "drowsy numbness" he experienced in "Ode on Indolence," but where in "Indolence" that numbness was a sign of disconnection from experience, in "Nightingale" it is a sign of too full a connection: "being too happy in thine happiness," as the speaker tells the nightingale. Hearing the song of the nightingale, the speaker longs to flee the human world and join the bird. His first thought is to reach the bird's state through alcohol--in the second stanza, he longs for a "draught of vintage" to transport him out of himself. But after his meditation in the third stanza on the transience of life, he rejects the idea of being "charioted by Bacchus and his pards" (Bacchus was the Roman god of wine and was supposed to have been carried by a chariot pulled by leopards) and chooses instead to embrace, for the first time since he refused to follow the figures in "Indolence," "the viewless wings of Poesy."
The rapture of poetic inspiration matches the endless creative rapture of the nightingale's music and lets the speaker, in stanzas five through seven, imagine himself with the bird in the darkened forest. The ecstatic music even encourages the speaker to embrace the idea of dying, of painlessly succumbing to death while enraptured by the nightingale's music and never experiencing any further pain or disappointment. But when his meditation causes him to utter the word "forlorn," he comes back to himself, recognizing his fancy for what it is--an imagined escape from the inescapable ("Adieu! the fancy cannot cheat so well / As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf"). As the nightingale flies away, the intensity of the speaker's experience has left him shaken, unable to remember whether he is awake or asleep.
In "Indolence," the speaker rejected all artistic effort. In "Psyche," he was willing to embrace the creative imagination, but only for its own internal pleasures. But in the nightingale's song, he finds a form of outward expression that translates the work of the imagination into the outside world, and this is the discovery that compels him to embrace Poesy's "viewless wings" at last. The "art" of the nightingale is endlessly changeable and renewable; it is music without record, existing only in a perpetual present. As befits his celebration of music, the speaker's language, sensually rich though it is, serves to suppress the sense of sight in favour of the other senses. He can imagine the light of the moon, "But here there is no light"; he knows he is surrounded by flowers, but he "cannot see what flowers" are at his feet. This suppression will find its match in "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which is in many ways a companion poem to "Ode to a Nightingale." In the later poem, the speaker will finally confront a created art-object not subject to any of the limitations of time; in "Nightingale," he has achieved creative expression and has placed his faith in it, but that expression--the nightingale's song--is spontaneous and without physical manifestation.
Commentary on ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE
In this meditation on poetic experience, the poet attempts to conceptualise a reconciliation of beauty and permanence through the symbol of the Nightingale The poet begins by explaining the nature and cause of the sadness he is experiencing, a sadness translated into a physical ache and a drowsy numbness. He feels as he might if he had taken some poison or sedating drug. This feeling is, in fact, the result of a deep awareness of the happiness of the nightingale he hears singing. His resulting pleasure is so intense it has become painful. He longs for some intoxicant that will let him achieve union with the nightingale, take him out of the world, and allow him to forget human suffering and despair and the transience of all experience. Wine, however, is rejected in favour of the poetic imagination. He enters some twilight region of the mind. While he can see nothing, the other senses feed his imagination, constructing within his mind what cannot be seen in fact. This prompts him to contemplate leaving the world altogether. He realises, however, that the ultimate form of forgetfulness, of escape from the troubles of life, would be death. Death at such a moment, listening to the nightingale pouring forth its soul in ecstasy, would be the supreme ending. And yet death is rejected. As the poet realises, the bird would sing on, and he would be unable to hear it. While all humans must die, the nightingale is, in some sense, immortal. The poet, thinking back to the classical world of the Roman emperors and to the Old Testament world of Ruth, considers how its song has been heard for so many centuries. Keats takes us even further back, into a fairy world, a landscape both magical and yet forlorn. With this word `forlorn', the spell is broken: the poet returns to the self, to the present. Fancy, he claims, has failed him once more. He again becomes aware of the landscape around him and the bird's song begins to fade, leaving him wondering whether his experience was a vision or a waking dream.
The nightingale has traditionally been associated with love. The influential myth of Philomela turned into a nightingale after being raped and tortured, stresses melancholy and suffering in association with love. It has also been associated with poetry. Keats no doubt knew Coleridge's two poems `To the Nightingale' (1796) and `The Nightingale: "A Conversation Poem"', and, according to his letters, only days before writing this ode he had talked with the older poet on such subjects as nightingales, poetry and poetical sensation.
Why did Keats choose the nightingale's song as the basis of meditation in this poem? Is he drawing upon its traditional associations or not? Such critics as Helen Vendler believe that in the choice of music Keats finds a symbol of pure beauty, non-representational, without any reference to ideas, to moral or social values. The nightingale's song is vocal, but without verbal content, and can serve as a pure expressive beauty. Others have argued that it represents the music of nature, which can be contrasted with human art, verbal or musical.
The poem is basically structured around the contrast between the poet, who is earthbound, and the bird, which is free. A related opposition is that between the mortal world, full of sorrow and marked by transience, and the world of the nightingale, marked by joy and immortality. One of the points that have troubled many critics is this claim of immortality for the nightingale: 'Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!' (line 61). The nightingale is, after all, a natural creature. It has been suggested that Keats is referring not to the individual bird, but to the species. This solution has been strongly criticised, however, as humanity, the `hungry generations' (line 62), could also be credited with such immortality as a species. An alternative suggestion is that the nightingale addressed in stanza 7 is purely symbolic; is this solution more convincing? If so, what does the nightingale symbolise? A further interpretation might be that, since the nightingale sings only at night and was traditionally thought of, therefore, as invisible, it, through its `disembodied' song, transcends the material world (so in that sense is immortal); and here Keats is talking about `embalmed darkness', an atmosphere of death.
Another problematic point is Keats's final question on the status of his experience: `Was it a vision or a waking dream?' (line 79). Some critics have decidedly affirmed that the poem is about the inadequacy of the imagination, a rejection of the `deceiving elf' (line 79). Others see more ambivalence in Keats's attitude. After the possibility of joining the bird in its immortal world has been rejected as a trick of the fancy, they would argue, Keats still suggests through his final question that such vision or transcendent experience is possible, or, at least, still something for which he longs. Is this, ultimately, an escapist poem, or is Keats emphasising the need to accept the human condition, with all the suffering that is associated with it? Compare the ode, in this respect, with the `Ode on Melancholy'.
Language is effectively used to create a mood. In the opening of the poem, for example, a sense of sluggish weightiness is suggested by the heavy thudding alliterative `d', `p', and' when Keats describes his own dull ache. Compare this with the effects created in the second half of the stanza by the light assonantal sounds in such words as `light' and `Dryad' and the sensuous assonantal sounds of 'beechen', `green' and `ease' when Keats turns to the joy of the nightingale. Compare the vitality and the jubilant tempo of stanza 2 with the dull heaviness and monotony in stanza 3. How are these different effects created? Consider, for a start, the use of repetition, with devices like parallelism and anaphora. There is a dense concentration of sense impressions in this ode, and a frequent use of synaesthesia. In stanza 1, for example, the `plot' where the bird sings is itself `melodious' and the song contains `summer': the visual evokes the aural and the aural the visual. In stanza 2, Keats conveys the taste of wine with reference to colour, action, song and sensation. When Keats says, in stanza 5, `I cannot see what flowers are at my feet, / Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs', the suggestion that the incense could be seen emphasises the density and headiness of the perfume: it is so strong it seems visible, tangible. This is often said to be the most personal of the odes. Perhaps it would be better to say that from the abrupt opening of:"My heart aches' onwards, it creates the impression of being the most subjective. Leaving aside the claim by many critics that it is personal in an autobiographical way, how is this impression of subjectivity achieved? It is the processes and movement of the poet's mind that are the central focus of `Ode to a Nightingale', and the personal `I' is very much in evidence. In this respect compare the poem with the `Ode on a Grecian Urn'.
Lethe-wards (Greek myth) Lethe is one of the rivers of Hades; the dead are obliged to drink from it in order that they may forget everything said and done when alive
Dryad a tree nymph
Hippocrene (Greek myth) the fountain of the Muses on Mount Helicon and therefore associated with poetic inspiration; here the term is used to suggest red wine as another source of inspiration
Bacchus and his pards (Roman myth) the god of wine; the pards are the leopards which draw his chariot
Fays fairies
Darkling in the dark
Synaesthesia: A sensation that usually only affects one sense is used to trigger a response in another.

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Keats' concept of beauty

Keats' concept of beauty

Keats was considerably influenced by Spenser and was, like Spenser, a passionate lover of beauty in all its forms and manifestations. The passion of beauty constitutes his aestheticism. Beauty was his pole star, beauty in nature, in a woman and in art.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
He writes and identifies beauty with truth. Of all the contemporary poets Keats is one of the most inevitably associated with the love of beauty. He was the most passionate lover of the world as the career of beautiful images and of many imaginative associations of an object or word with a heightened emotional appeal. Poetry, according to Keats, should be the incarnation of beauty, not a medium for the expression of religious or social philosophy. He hated didacticism in poetry.
“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.”

He believed that poetry should be unobtrusive. The poet, according to him, is a creator and an artist, not a teacher or a prophet. In a letter to his brother he wrote:

“With a great poet, the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration.”
He even disapproved Shelley for subordinating the true end of poetry to the object of social reform. He dedicated his brief life to the expression of beauty as he said:
“I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.”
For Keats, the world of beauty was an escape from the dreary and painful life or experience. He escaped from the political and social problems of the world into the realm of imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, he remained untouched by revolutionary theories for the regression of mankind. His later poems such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Hyperion” show an increasing interest in human problems and humanity and if he had lived he would have established a closer contact with reality. He may overall be termed as a poet of escape. With him, poetry existed not as an instrument of social revolt nor of philosophical doctrine but for the expression of beauty. He aimed at expressing beauty for its own sake.
Keats did not like only those things that are beautiful according to the recognized standards. He had deep insight to see beauty even in those things that are not thought beautiful by ordinary people. He looked at autumn and says that even autumn has beauty and charm:
“Where are the song of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.”
In Keats, we have a remarkable contrast both with Byron on the one side and with Shelley on the other. Keats was neither rebel nor a utopian dreamer. Endowed with a purely artistic nature, he took up in regard to all the movements and conflicts of his time, a position of almost complete detacher. He knew nothing of Byron’s stormy spirit of the hostility of the existing order of things and he had no sympathy with Shelley’s humanitarian and passion for reforming the world. The famous opening line of “Endymion”, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ strikes the keynote of his work. As the modern world seemed to him to be hard, cold and prosaic, he habitually sought an imaginative escape from it. He loved nature just for its own sake and for the glory and loveliness which he found in it, and no modern poet has ever been nearer than he was to the simple “poetry for earth” but there was nothing mystical in love and nature was never fraught for him, as for Wordsworth and Shelley, with spiritual message and meanings.
Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romantics while Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating the impossible reforms and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political measure. Worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart or to reflect some splendor of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be, he had the noble idea that poetry exists for its own sake and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics.
Disinterested love of beauty is one of the qualities that made Keats great and that distinguished him from his great contemporaries. He grasped the essential oneness of beauty and truth. His creed did not mean the beauty of form alone. His ideal was the Greek ideal of beauty inward and outward, the perfect soul of verse and the perfect form. Precisely because he held this ideal, he was free from the wish to preach.
Keats’ early sonnets are largely concerned with poets, pictures, sculptures or the rural solitude in which a poet might nurse his fancy. His great odes have for their subjects a storied Grecian Urn; a nightingale; the goddess Psyche, mistress of Cupid; the melancholy and indolence of a poet; and the season of autumn, to which he turns from the songs of spring. What he asked of poesy, of wine, or of nightingale’s song was to help him:
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget,
What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever and the fret,Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.”
“I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill” and “Sleep and Poetry” – the theme of both these poems is that lovely things in nature suggest lovely tales to the poet, and great aim of a poet is to be a friend to soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man. Perhaps Keats would have said that he attempted his nobler life of poetry in poems like “Lamia” and “Hyperion” but it is very doubtful whether he believed that he had done justice to this elevated type of poetic creation.
Keats’ love of beauty is not ‘Platonic’ in nature. He loves physical objects and takes interest in human body. He does not become obscene but his love of beauty gives us very attractive and suggestive picture of women:
“Yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel forever its soft fall and swell,Awake forever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender taken breath,And so live ever.”
Religion for him took definite shape in the adoration of the beautiful, an adoration which he developed into a doctrine. Beauty is the supreme truth. It is imagination that discovers beauty. This idealism assumes a note of mysticism. One can see a sustained allegory in “Endymion” and certain passages are most surely possessed of a symbolical value. Sidney Colvin says:
“It was not Keats aim merely to create a paradise of art and beauty discovered from the cares and interests of the world. He did aim at the creation and revelation of beauty, but of beauty whatever its element existed. His concept of poetry covered the whole range of life and imagination.”

As he did not live long enough, he was not able to fully illustrate the vast range of his conception of beauty. Fate did not give him time enough to fully unlock the ‘mysteries of the heart’ and to illuminate and put in proper perspective the great struggles and problems of human life.

Read more »

Keat's concept of Beauty

Keat's concept of Beauty

Keats was considerably influenced by Spenser and was, like Spenser, a passionate lover of beauty in all its forms and manifestations. The passion of beauty constitutes his aestheticism. Beauty was his pole star, beauty in nature, in the woman and in art.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”
He writes and identifies beauty with truth. Of all the contemporary poets Keats is one of the most inevitably associated with the love of beauty. He was the most passionate lover of the world as the career of beautiful images and of many imaginative associations of an object or word with a heightened emotional appeal. Poetry, according to Keats, should be the incarnation of beauty, not a medium for the expression of religious or social philosophy. He hated didacticism in poetry.
“We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.”

He believed that poetry should be unobtrusive. The poet, according to him, is a creator and an artist, not a teacher or a prophet. In a letter to his brother he wrote:

“With a great poet, the sense of beauty overcomes every other consideration.”
He even disapproved Shelley for subordinating the true end of poetry to the object of social reform. He dedicated his brief life to the expression of beauty as he said:
“I have loved the principle of beauty in all things.”
For Keats, the world of beauty was an escape from the dreary and painful life or experience. He escaped from the political and social problems of the world into the realm of imagination. Unlike Wordsworth, Coleridge, Byron, and Shelley, he remained untouched by revolutionary theories for the regression of mankind. His later poems such as “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Hyperion” show an increasing interest in human problems and humanity and if he had lived he would have established a closer contact with reality. He may overall be termed as a poet of escape. With him, poetry existed not as an instrument of social revolt nor of philosophical doctrine but for the expression of beauty. He aimed at expressing beauty for its own sake.
Keats did not like only those things that are beautiful according to the recognized standards. He had deep insight to see beauty even in those things that are not thought beautiful by ordinary people. He looked at autumn and says that even autumn has beauty and charm:
“Where are the song of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too, –While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue.”
In Keats, we have a remarkable contrast both with Byron on the one side and with Shelley on the other. Keats was neither rebel nor a utopian dreamer. Endowed with a purely artistic nature, he took up in regard to all the movements and conflicts of his time, a position of almost complete detacher. He knew nothing of Byron’s stormy spirit of the hostility of the existing order of things and he had no sympathy with Shelley’s humanitarian and passion for reforming the world. The famous opening line of “Endymion”, ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’ strikes the keynote of his work. As the modern world seemed to him to be hard, cold and prosaic, he habitually sought an imaginative escape from it. He loved nature just for its own sake and for the glory and loveliness which he found in it, and no modern poet has ever been nearer than he was to the simple “poetry for earth” but there was nothing mystical in love and nature was never fraught for him, as for Wordsworth and Shelley, with spiritual message and meanings.
Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of the Romantics while Scott was merely telling stories, and Wordsworth reforming poetry or upholding the moral law, and Shelley advocating the impossible reforms and Byron voicing his own egoism and the political measure. Worshipping beauty like a devotee, perfectly content to write what was in his own heart or to reflect some splendor of the natural world as he saw or dreamed it to be, he had the noble idea that poetry exists for its own sake and suffers loss by being devoted to philosophy or politics.
Disinterested love of beauty is one of the qualities that made Keats great and that distinguished him from his great contemporaries. He grasped the essential oneness of beauty and truth. His creed did not mean the beauty of form alone. His ideal was the Greek ideal of beauty inward and outward, the perfect soul of verse and the perfect form. Precisely because he held this ideal, he was free from the wish to preach.
Keats’ early sonnets are largely concerned with poets, pictures, sculptures or the rural solitude in which a poet might nurse his fancy. His great odes have for their subjects a storied Grecian Urn; a nightingale; the goddess Psyche, mistress of Cupid; the melancholy and indolence of a poet; and the season of autumn, to which he turns from the songs of spring. What he asked of poesy, of wine, or of nightingale’s song was to help him:
“Fade far away, dissolve, and quite forget,What thou amongst the leaves hast never known,The weariness, the fever and the fret,Here, where men sit and hear each other groan.”
“I Stood Tiptoe Upon a Little Hill” and “Sleep and Poetry” – the theme of both these poems is that lovely things in nature suggest lovely tales to the poet, and great aim of the poet is to be a friend to soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man. Perhaps Keats would have said that he attempted his nobler life of poetry in poems like “Lamia” and “Hyperion” but it is very doubtful whether he believed that he had done justice to this elevated type of poetic creation.
Keats’ love of beauty is not ‘Platonic’ in nature. He loves physical objects and takes interest in human body. He does not become obscene but his love of beauty gives us very attractive and suggestive picture of women:
“Yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,Pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast,To feel forever its soft fall and swell,Awake forever in a sweet unrest,Still, still to hear her tender taken breath,And so live ever.”
Religion for him took definite shape in the adoration of the beautiful, an adoration which he developed into a doctrine. Beauty is the supreme truth. It is imagination that discovers beauty. This idealism assumes a note of mysticism. One can see a sustained allegory in “Endymion” and certain passages are most surely possessed of a symbolical value. Sidney Colvin says:
“It was not Keats aim merely to create a paradise of art and beauty discovered from the cares and interests of the world. He did aim at the creation and revelation of beauty, but of beauty whatever its element existed. His concept of poetry covered the whole range of life and imagination.”


As he did not live long enough, he was not able to fully illustrate the vast range of his conception of beauty. Fate did not give him time enough to fully unlock the ‘mysteries of the heart’ and to illuminate and put in proper perspective the great struggles and problems of human life.

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Keat's sensuousness

Keat's sensuousness



Keats is a mystic of the senses and not of thoughts as he sought to apprehend the ultimate truth of the universe through aesthetic sensations and not through philosophical thoughts.


Sensuousness is a quality in poetry which affects the senses i.e. hearing, seeing, touching, smelling and tasting. Sensuous poetry does not present ideas and philosophical thoughts. It gives delight to senses, appeals to our eyes by presenting beautiful and colorful word pictures to our ears by its metrical music and musical sounds, to our nose by arousing the sense of smell and so on.


Keats is the worshiper of beauty and peruses beauty everywhere, and it is his senses that first reveal to him the beauty of things. He writes poetry only out of what he feels upon his pulses. Thus, it is his sense impressions that kindled his imagination which makes him realize the great principle that:


‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’


Keats loves nature for its own sake. He has a straightforward passion for nature by giving his whole soul to the unalloyed enjoyment of its sensuous beauty.


Poetry originates from sense impressions and all poets are more or less sensuous. Sense impressions are the starting point of the poetic process. It is what the poet sees and hears that excites his emotions and imagination. The emotional and imaginative reaction to sense impressions generates poetry.


The poets give the impressions receive by their eyes only. Wordsworth’s imagination is stirred by what he sees and hears in nature. Milton is no less sensitive to the beauty of nature, of the flowers in “Paradise Lost” in a sensuous manner. But Keats’ poetry appeals to our sense of sight, hearing, taste, smell, and touch and sense of hot and cold. He exclaims in one of his letters:


O for a life of sensation than of thoughts


He is a pure poet in sense of seeking not sensual but sensuous delight.


SENSE OF SIGHT: Keats is a painter of words. In a few words, he presents a concrete and solid picture of sensuous beauty.


“Her hair was long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.”


And in “Ode on Grecian Urn” again the sense of sight is active.


“O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with bread
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;”


SENSE OF HEARING: The music of nightingale produces pangs of pain in poet’s heart.


“The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days, by emperor and clown:”


In “Ode on Grecian Urn” he says:


“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;”


SENSE OF TOUCH: The opening lines of “La Belle Dame Sans Merci” describe extreme cold:


“The sedge is withered from the lake
And no birds sing.”


SENSE OF TASTE: In “Ode to Nightingale”, Keats describes different kinds of wine and the idea of their tastes in intoxication.


“O for a beaker full of the warm South
Full of the true the blushful Hippocrene,”


SENSE OF SMELL: In “Ode to Nightingale”, the poet can’t see the flowers in darkness. There is mingled perfume of many flowers.


“I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,
Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs,
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet.”


Perhaps the best example of Keats sensuousness is “Ode to Autumn”. In this ode, the season of autumn is described in sensuous terms in which all senses are called forth.


“Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom friend of the maturing sun;”


For Keats Autumn is the season of apples on mossed cottage tree, of fruits which are ripe to the core and of later flowers for bees. Thus autumn to Keats is full of pictures of delights of sense. There are the ripe fruit and ripe grains and also there is music that appeals to the ear.


The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft.


Keats is a poet of sensations. His thought is enclosed in sensuousness. In the epithets he uses are rich in sensuous quality – delicious face, melodious plot, sunburnt mirth, embalmed darkness and anguish moist. Not only are the sense perceptions of Keats are quick and alert but he has the rare gift of communicating these perceptions by concrete and sound imagery.


As time passes Keats mind matured and he expresses an intellectual and spiritual passion. He begins to see not only their beauty but also in their truth which makes Keats the “inheritor of unfulfilled renown”.


Keats is more poet of sensuousness than a poet of contemplation. Sometimes he passes from sensuousness to sentiments. In his mature works like Odes or the Hyperion, the poet mixes sensuousness with sentiments, voluptuousness with vitality, aestheticism with intellectualism. However, the nucleus of Keats’ poetry is sensuousness. It is his senses which revealed him the beauty of things, the beauty of universe from the stars of the sky to the flowers of the wood.




Keats’ pictorial senses are not vague or suggestive but made definite with a wealth of artistic detail. Every stanza, every line is replete with sensuous beauty. No other poet except Shakespeare could show such a mastery of language and felicity of sensuousness.

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Egg hypersensitive reaction

Egg hypersensitive reaction

Eggs are all around the area. Are they served for breakfast, as well as in an extensive variety of sustenances — from biscuits to meatloaf. But, recall the possibility which you have been prone to eggs. Infants from time to time can have an unfavorably likely response to eggs. On the off risk that that occurs, they can't consume eggs for a while. The uplifting information is that most youngsters exceed this allergy by age 5 and may devour eggs with no trouble after that.


what is an egg sensitivity?

You presumably comprehend that some humans are touchy to particular sustenances, much like peanuts or shrimp. At the point, while a man has a nourishment hypersensitive reaction, his or her frame reacts as although the sustenance is a dangerous substance. This could manifest to a little child who eats eggs in view that his or her resistant framework is not created and can not cope with the protein in eggs. (maximum kids who're adversely stricken by eggs are hypersensitive to the protein this is in the egg whites, but some respond to the protein in the yolk.)

The secure framework, which usually ensures in opposition to germs and one-of-a-kind troubles, makes use of antibodies to warfare the egg protein like it's a hurtful trespasser. A toddler who's susceptible to eggs may additionally sense debilitated or get a rash after eating eggs or any nourishment containing eggs. The reaction ought to appear quick, or it can take a couple of hours.

signs and symptoms and aspect effects

right here are aspect consequences someone may also have because of an egg sensitivity:

pores and skin: hives, dermatitis, flushing, or swelling

stomach related framework: gut torment, loose bowels, sickness, regurgitating, or tingling around the mouth respiration framework: runny nostril, wheezing, or trouble relaxing cardiovascular framework: short pulse, low circulatory strain, or coronary heart problems In uncommon cases, a man could have a severe hypersensitive response, which could result in hypersensitive reaction (say: an uh-fish-lak-sister). Spark off medicinal consideration is needed because the character can also have breathing problems and a drop in circulatory strain.

Hypersensitivity is dealt with with a drug known as epinephrine (say: ep-uh-nef-rin), that's given by using infusion (shot). Youngsters who have an intense egg sensitivity will for the most element convey — or have a grown-up deliver — an epinephrine infusion, on the occasion of some unexpected trouble.

how is it analyzed?

Given that this sensitivity is frequently, to begin with, visible in babies, a father or mother may also see that the toddler receives a rash or becomes sick no longer lengthy after eating eggs. The answer is extra frequently than now not to abstain from giving the kid eggs until she or he gets more set up and the professional says it is all right to attempt eggs over again.

Inside the occasion that, as an other seasoned baby, you surmise which you have reacted to eggs, you ought no longer devour eggs or whatever containing eggs until you have got visible an expert. The professional may additionally pick to do a skin check. That is a conventional technique to test for sensitivities to eggs, distinct nourishments, and materials.




The specialist will place a little drop of a concentrate on the pores and skin and in a while tenderly prick the pores and skin to give a small measure of the allergen into the pores and skin. At the of risk that a ruddy, raised spot creates in which the egg pay attention was dropped, the character has egg hypersensitive reaction.




The specialist may also likewise check exceptional sustenances or substances that motive sensitivities. At times, the specialist may take a little degree of your blood and test it, correctly if the skin checks don't respond.




It's imperative to don't forget that despite the fact that the specialist exams for sustenance hypersensitivities by way of supplying you to a bit measure of the nourishment, you ought not to strive this at domestic! The excellent location for an allergy check is at the professional's office, in which they're uniquely organized and will provide you with medicine at the off hazard that you had a true reaction.




how is it handled?




The best approach to deal with an egg sensitivity is to abstain from consuming eggs or any nourishment containing eggs. Guardians need to help babies, and younger youngsters sidestep eggs. A few more set up kids won't exceed their egg allergic reaction. Those children can figure out how to appearance out for eggs and nourishments made with eggs.




anticipation is the name of the diversion with sustenance sensitivities, so it is vital for kids to research:




the most practical approach to deal with a response inside the occasion that they've one




the only approach to avoid eggs and egg-containing sustenances




treating a response




Kids who have an egg allergic reaction should have an association inside the occasion that they inadvertently consume eggs. Paintings along with your parents, specialist, and college medical attendant to have an arrangement set up. It might consist of having the prescription to be had, for example, an antihistamine, or in extreme instances, epinephrine.




maintaining far away from eggs




Youngsters who're sensitive to eggs can get to be experts at preserving far away from eggs in the sustenances they devour. Be that as it could, it may be difficult here and there, so a baby should do not hesitate to ask a discern or different grown up for assistance in making the feel of if a nourishment is sheltered. As an example, egg substitutes are honestly not okay for youngsters with egg hypersensitivities because they include egg whites.




here are the manner eggs, in their many systems, are recorded on sustenance marks:




dried egg




egg white




egg white solids




egg yolk




egg solids




powdered egg




entire egg




the accompanying fixings additionally need to be stayed far from at the off chance which you have egg hypersensitivity:




egg whites




globulin




livetin




lysozyme




ovalbumin




ovoglobulin




ovomucin




orosomucoid




ovotransferrin




Ovo Vitelli




Ovo vitellin




silica albuminate




simplest




vitellin




test the rundown




In the event which you have egg sensitivity, keep a review of these fixings useful. It is harder while there's no name to check, much like while you're at an eatery or accomplice's home. The excellent factor to do is ask earlier than you eat!




on the off hazard which you like heated merchandise, as an instance, cupcakes or truffles, you could endorse your mother or father to try this substitution in a formulation that calls for eggs:




make use of 1½ tablespoons (22.2 milliliters) oil and one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of preparing powder for every egg.




While you're getting rid of eggs, you will need to make certain no matter the entirety you are getting protein from one of a kind sustenances. Some excellent ones are meat, rooster, fish, and vegetables (beans and peanuts).




On the off danger which you have a couple of nourishment sensitivity, you might need to speak with a dietitian — a person who is aware of a first rate deal approximately working towards proper consuming conduct. Be that as it could, if it's simply eggs you have to maintain a strategic distance from, your guardian let you consume right. Indeed, you can be in the eggcellent well being without eggs, and that is no yolk!

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sun eclipse

sun eclipse

A solar eclipse (as seen from the planet Earth) is a form of eclipse that happens when the Moon passes among the solar and Earth, and when the Moon completely or in part blocks ("occults") the sun. this will happen simplest at the new moon while the sun and the Moon are in conjunction as visible from Earth in an alignment referred to as syzygy. In a total eclipse, the disk of the sun is completely obscured by way of the Moon. In partial and annular eclipses, handiest a part of the solar is obscured.

If the Moon has been in a superbly circular orbit, a touch closer to the Earth, and in the equal orbital aircraft, there might be total solar eclipses each month. however, since the Moon's orbit is tilted at extra than 5 tiers to the Earth's orbit across the solar, its shadow typically misses Earth. The Moon's orbit needs to go Earth's ecliptic aircraft so as for an eclipse (each solar as well as lunar) to arise. further, the Moon's actual orbit is elliptical, often taking it a long way sufficient far away from Earth that its obvious size is not huge enough to dam the solar completely. The orbital planes go every other at a line of nodes resulting in at least two, and up to 5, sun eclipses occurring each 12 months; no extra than of which can be general eclipses. however, overall sun eclipses are uncommon at any particular place due to the fact totality exists only along a narrow route in the world's floor traced by way of the Moon's shadow or umbra.

An eclipse is a natural phenomenon. but, in a few ancient and cutting-edge cultures, solar eclipses have been attributed to supernatural reasons or regarded as bad omens. a complete solar eclipse may be horrifying to folks that are ignorant of its astronomical clarification, as the solar seems to vanish at some point of the day and the sky darkens in a remember of mins.

considering the fact that looking directly at the solar can cause everlasting eye harm or blindness, special eye protection or indirect viewing strategies are used whilst viewing a sun eclipse. it's miles technically safe to view most effective the entire segment of a complete solar eclipse with the unaided eye and without safety; but, that is a dangerous exercise, as the general public is not trained to recognize the stages of an eclipse, that may span over  hours even as the entire section can handiest final a maximum of 7.5 mins for any person region. people called eclipse chasers or umbraphiles will tour to far off places to look at or witness anticipated vital solar eclipses.

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Losing someone Who doesn't respect and appreciate you is actually a gain , not a loss

Losing someone Who doesn't respect and appreciate you is actually a gain , not a loss

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Lines Written in Early Spring BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

Lines Written in Early Spring
BY WILLIAM WORDSWORTH


I heard a thousand blended notes,
While in a grove I sate reclined,
In that sweet mood when pleasant thoughts
Bring sad thoughts to the mind.

To her fair works did Nature link
The human soul that through me ran;
And much it grieved my heart to think
What man has made of man.

Through primrose tufts, in that green bower,
The periwinkle trailed its wreaths;
And ’tis my faith that every flower
Enjoys the air it breathes.

The birds around me hopped and played,
Their thoughts I cannot measure:—
But the least motion which they made
It seemed a thrill of pleasure.

The budding twigs spread out their fan,
To catch the breezy air;
And I must think, do all I can,
That there was pleasure there.

If this belief from heaven be sent,
If such be Nature’s holy plan,
Have I not reason to lament
What man has made of man?


Lines written in Early spring is a comparison of the state of nature to the state of mankind.
The poem is a ballad composed in six quatrains; six stanzas of four lines, being each line composed by four iambic feet. The rhyme scheme is ABAB, CDCD, EFEF, GHGH, DIDI, JDJD.
In the poem, ‘Written in Early Spring’, Wordsworth feels sad about the fact that man alone among all creation is neither in harmony with his own kind nor with nature.The poet believes that he is in perfect communion with Nature and the soul that runs through him is shared with that of Nature.
The poet was sitting under a tree, listening to the music of the breeze, the chirping of birds and the creaking of insects. He is in that sweet mood.
The natural sights and sounds have brought a sweet mood in him. But, along with it some sad thoughts too come to his mind.
Nature seems to have linked his soul with her soul in perfect communion.
He is happy in that realization of a spiritual companionship with Nature. But his happiness s spoilt when he realizes that man's greed has destroyed the biodiversity of the earth. He has made the lives of fellow humans miserable by his thoughtless and inhuman acts (Pl note that the poem was written with the memory of French Revolution during which WW was present in France)

The poet is trying to say that the plants and the flowers coexist peacefully and seem to derive pleasure from their living.
Similarly, the birds seem to be in harmony and seem to derive pleasure in their movements of hopping and playing. In the same way the poet feels that the fresh branches seem to experience pleasure as they spread out into the air to catch it.
In the last stanza, the poet sums up what he has said. He feels that if the divine plan or ‘Nature’s holy plan’ is pleasurable and peaceful coexistence, he wonders why man alone has moved away from this plan. Only man lives in discord with himself and the rest of creation.


....................

This poem describes William Wordsworth outside on an afternoon in early spring. the entirety is so alive and appears to be enjoying the sector so greatly, its contrast against the human response to matters is as a substitute depressing. all the vegetation are blooming and the birds are singing. the author wonders why such a nice surroundings brings such unhappy thoughts to thoughts.
Spring has usually represented a period of rebirth and renewal, each in nature and in literature. it's far the beginning of a brand new cycle, a new starting. Why is Wordsworth so sad?
One possiblility will be a herbal resistance to change. I recognise in my opinion i'm not a large fan of alternate and huge adjustments appear very hard to me.
This poem may speak the remoted role of man within the global. man is caught in among everything; no longer quite a person and now not quite a beast. He has the ability to look at the arena around him and realise and mentally method it to a degree this is a ways past nevertheless being a beast, and but he isn't always capable of communicating fully with the bestial global or completely know-how the essence of human intuition. guy, however, is not God. There are circumstances which might be to date above him that he can do not anything about. man is a mortal being, situation to the elements and his very own decisions. It leaves guy in the middle floor. He can't be fully glad with such a nice day as nature is because he is capable of assume and recognize things to a new level that takes away a sure degree of bestial innocence. but, he isn't able to fix this stuff and ought to honestly address them. for instance, he may additionally pay attention to the birds chatting away merrily to each different, but he cannot realise what they are announcing. he is excluded from the arena of the beasts. The ultimate stanza talks about whether those ideals are heaven ship, acknowledging that man isn't god. guy is what man makes of himself. because he is between the strains, it's far as much as him to determine what course he's going to circulate in. Wordsworth seems to lament that guy has not stayed greater simplistic.

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salalah-oman

Salalah is the 2nd largest city in Oman. Salalah is very cloudy during the monsoon Months of July and August, even thoush little rain falls. It's recognised for its banana plantations, Arabian Sea beaches and waters teeming with sea life. The area gained importance in ancient times because of its wealth of frankincense.
Frankincense(Luban) trees are native to this region, one of just a few places worldwide, and for this reason the city is often called the “perfume capital of Arabia.” The tomb of Prophet Ayub is on the beautiful Hills of Ittin.

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