Art v/s Reality in the odes of Keats: With reference to Ode on a

Gracian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy, and Ode to

autumn

Smruti Subhra Samal, M.A. (English)

Ravenshaw University, Cuttack, Orissa

Email: smrutisubhra@gmail.com

ABSTRACT:

John Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of romantics. He had the

noble idea that poetry exits for its own sake and suffers a cross by being devoted to

philosophy or politics or to any other however great or small. John Keats is perhaps

most famous for his Odes. For Keats, small, slow acts of death occurred and he

chronicled these small mortal occurrences. The end of a cover embrace, the image

of ancient Urn, the reaping of grains in Autumn– all of these are not only symbols of

death but instances of it. In his poetry Keats proposed the contemplating of beauty

as a way of delaying the inevitability of death. In many of keats’s poems, the speaker

leaves the real world to explore a transcendent , mythical or aesthetic realm. At the

end of the poem the speaker returns to his ordinary life transformed in some way

and armed with a new understanding. In his poems, Keats seems to be telling us

that melancholy is an integral part of experience which must be accepted willingly as

an inevitable element in life. The poet himself seems to dominate the poems with his

longing to escape from the world of human suffering to an infinitely superior domain

in his own imagination. Many of his poems deals with sorrows but even these are

brightened by his natural references to earth, nature, love and beauty.

 1. INTRODUCTION :

John Keats was one of the main figures of the second generation of romantic poet. But his

work only having been in publication for four years before his death . His poems were not

generally well received by the critics during his time. But by the end of the 19th century he

had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He drew his inspiration from some

of his best predecessors, Spenser ,Milton, and Dryden and his influence has been profound

upon the best of his successors.

Keats was not only the last but also the most perfect of romantics. While Scott was

merely telling stories and Wordsworth was reforming poetry or moral laws and

Shelly, advocating moral reforms, Keats lived apart from men and from political

measures , worshiping beauty like a devotee , perfectly contempt to write what was in

his own heart. He had the noble idea that poetry exits for its own sake and suffers a

cross by being devoted to philosophy or politics or to any other however great or

small. Keats volume of poetry is unequalled by the work of any his contemporaries .

the poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery , most notably in the series of

odes.

2. ODE:
An English ode is a lyrical stanza in praise of , or dedicated to someone or something that

captures the poet’s interest or serves as an inspiration for the ode . An ode is a long poem

serious in subject and treatment , elevated in style and elaborate in its stanza structure .

The earliest odes in the English language, using the word in its strict

forms were the Epithalamium and Prothalamium of Edmund Spenser. In the 17 th

century, the most important original odes in English are by Abraham Cowley.

2.1 KEATS’S ODES:

The first and foremost quality of his odes are their unity of impression. John Keats tried his

pen at various forms of writing , but none of them yielded him as great success as the ode

form . The odes of Keats are highly subjective and personal in character. The conflict of odes

were on the choice between the real world and the ideal world which he created by his

imagination. The other conflict of odes are art and life , pleasure and pain , happiness and

melancholy. Most of the odes of Keats are a manifestations of these inner conflict of his mind

. Therefore, Keats is always remembered chiefly as a writer of odes .

2.2 KEATS’S POETIC ART IN THE ODES :

“The excellence of every art is its intensity, capable of making

All disagreeable evaporate from their being in close relationship

with Beauty and Truth”.- John Keats

His poem “ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in the spring of 1819. The Grecian urn is a

relic of antiquity and a chronicler of ancient Greek pastoral life . The sight of the urn sets the

poet’s imagination in motion. Then he addresses the Urn as an unrevised bride of quietness
and a foster child of silence. He also calls the Urn a “sylvan historians” because of the rural

and forest scenes covered on its surface. He also refers the human beings and God depicted

on the Urn in the beautiful walls of temple and arcadia. He also watches the men in a

passionate mood chasing madly after their beloveds who are struggling to escape from their

clutches. All these sights fill the poet’s mind with wonder.

After the opening invocation follows a stream of questions which flash their own

answers upon us out of the darkness of antiquity. Questions which are at the same

time pictures :

“what men or Gods are these?

What maidens lath ?

What mad to pursuit ?

What struggle to escape ?

What pipes and tumbrels ?

What wide ecstasy ?

The sight immediately fills the poet’s mind with a sense of wonder and he speculates what

might be the theme of Urn. The life-like attitude of the figures depicted on the urn strike the

poet with astonishment. Men are mistaken for God, there are blushful maidens struggling to

escape from lovers and there are pipers playing on with tireless zest. These pictures

naturally made the poet conscious of the superiority of art over life. The unheard music

suggested by the figure of the piper, gives ample scope to the imagination and is therefore

sweeter. Because in life the sweetest music must come to an end. Hence, he writes:

“Heard melodies are sweet,

But those unheard are sweeter”

The excited lover madly running after the beloved, the blushful maiden trying to escape is

immortalized. True, the painted cover can’t kiss the beloved but at the same time the beloved

can’t fade away from the cover as it could be done in the real life. Nor can the trees and the

urn shed their leaves. The pictures of the sacrificial scene are the climax of the poet’s

imagination. Keats speculates that the people of the urn must have left a town and the town

must have been emptied. The inhabitants presented on the urn are ever fixed. Though the

picture of the town is not presented before the eyes, but the poet’s imagination can see it in a

realistic manner.

Keats presents two worlds in the ode – the world of life and the world of art. The former

is based on reality and the later on imagination. In the former :

“All breathing human passions far above

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,

A burning forehead , and a parching tongue”

The same idea has been expressed in Keats’s “Ode to a Nightingale”. In other words eternal

peace is found in a noble work of art. Hence , the poet wishes to fly away from the world of

“reality to the world of art”. What he gains and what he loses in a matter of debate. But we

know that behind every art , there is life and without life , the concept of art is impossible.

Perhaps for that reason ,Keats calls the urn “A Gold pastoral”. In this poem ,Keats makes it

clear that , human emotion and happiness are brief , but art can enshrine them with an ideal

beauty that never fades.

In this ode Keats contemplates the essence of the Nightingale and contrasts it with his own

worldly state and the nature of mortal life. The Nightingale’s song in the first part of the

poem manifests the joyful moments that stir and move the individual like a drug. The bird
lives in harmony with nature. The Nightingale ,”among the leaves,” has never experienced

the miseries of human life :

“where youth grows pale , and spectre- thin , and dies;

Where but to think is to be full of sorrow

And leaden-eyed despairs;”

Keats further glorifies the Nightingale by observing that :

“thou wast not born for death, immortal bird !

It seems painful and much the same as death. many death images are notable. It is when the

nightingale seems to experience a kindof death and also the god Apollo undergoes death

experience, although his deathdiscloses his own divinity. Inthis ode, Keats pictures the loss of

actual and real world and considers himself dead asasod which the nightingale sings for.The

poet here passes from the world of time into the world of eternity as in the “ode to A Gracian

Urn”. The song of that bard is the voice of eternity heard by emperors and clowns of ages:

The same that oft- times hath

Charmed magic casements, opening on the foam

Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

The world of eternity into which the poet was transport by the wings of poesy is replaced by

the world of time .Within the ode ,Keats moves from his contemplation of the bird to a

contemplation of his own feelings.The mime of the ode has been beautifully summed up by

five pregnant words:

“Beauty is truth and truth beauty”

Similarly the same idea has been expressed again in “Ode on melancholy” keats accepts the

truth he sees joy and pain are inseparable and to experience joy fully we must experience

sadness or melancholy fully. This ode has a logical stricter or progression. This ode makes

the whole theme on a clear paradox where the pleasure and pain are closely related and grief

stays at the heart of joy. The poem is about pleasure and pain, and the ode starts its first

stanza with pain. In this stanza there is a lot of diction to do with depression like the word

“Lethe”, “wolf’s bane” etc. The basic thought of this ode is that “true melancholy doesn’t lie

in sad and ugly things of life , but in joyous and beautiful objects of our earthly existence”. It

is in vain, if we try to find true melancholy in dark and somber aspects of things because :

“For shade to shade will come too drowsily,

And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.”

Again the poet concentrates on the world of realities where he emphasizes how sadness

inevitable accompanies joy and beauty. The rose ids beautiful indeed, but we can’t think of

rose without its thorn. It is therefore impossible to escape from inevitable pain in life.

Melancholy arises from the transience of joy and joy is transient by its nature. The sorrow

and pain take away in the eyes of beloved. Some cases we found the sufferer instead

overwhelm his sorrow with some natural beauties:

“Glut thy sorrow on a morning rose.

Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,”

At the end part of the poem speaker says,true melancholy lives with the beauty and joy. We

realize that both beauty and joy are short-lived. Through apparently delight and melancholy

are quite opposite to each other, yet one who tastes delights and tastes melancholy also.

“she dwells with Beauty-Beauty that must die ;

And joy, whose hand is ever at his lips”

Keats describes the true character of melancholy. He personified melancholy as a goddess,

she and the goddess of beauty dwell in the same temple. So when a pleasure seeker is testing

the sweetness of physical delights, he doesn’t forget that he will reach a stage when satiety

and exhaustion which are the natural effect of pleasure will fall which fills him with

melancholy.

Thus the haunting thought of the transitoriness of beauty and joy makes any flight to

remote ideal world impossible. Keats feels that only those who experience, pleasure will

suffer from melancholy. The line “His soul shall taste the sadness of her might” shows that

nothing can be done once pleasure has turns to pain.

But the critics say: only that person who has tasted the sweetness of joy can

appreciate the bitterness of melancholy. The perception of this Ode; as Robert Bridges

admires, “This Ode is profound and no doubt experienced”. In this ode, Keats emphasizes the

all- pervading nature of melancholy in human life.

Keats last ode “Ode to Autumn” is one of the most thematically rich of

Keats ode . The theme indicates that Autumn is a season of bringing fulfilling and fruition,

yet the theme ending the pictures of Autumn as a season of dying. The three stanza poem

seems to generate three different stages of Autumn growth, harvest, and death. Autumn is a

season of “mellow fruitfulness”. Ode to autumn is a poem of untroubled serenity. Where the

poet describes autumn is the bosom friend of the maturing sun. Autumn depicts the theme of

ripeness, decay and death in describing the natural cycle of seasons: Autumn , spring and

winter. The poem depicting an entirely different mood of Keats, a mood of complete calm

and serenity, a mood that sets his mind at rest .he enjoys the “season of mists and mellow

fruitfulness”. He is happy to think that soon all fruits shall be full :

“with ripeness to the core”

In the opening stanza of the poem we find sun at its height of maturity prepared,
 “ To load and bless

With fruit the vines”

The ode gives a graphic description of the season of autumn with all its richness.But as the

poem progresses it gives an authentic images of autumn through living personifications like

those of a reaper, a gleaner and a wine –grower.

“Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

………

Thy hair soft lifted by the winnowing wind;”

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep”

As the poem progress, the day starts dawning and towards the close of poem. But when the

winter is about to set in for the poet asks,

“where are the song of spring?”.

Immediately the questions is stilled , and the momentary regret gives place to contentment:

“Think not of them, thou hast thy music too”.

Thus the hidden meaning in the poem is the ups and downs to which human life is always so

prone. This joy in the present, the isolation of the beauty of the hour, the making of it a divine

possession and losing in its loveliness the pain of life. It’s the power of isolation the present

hour from the past or the future which gives to the poem a unique charm.

The concluding stanzas of the odes express two philosophical ideas. First,the

incomprehensibility of the infinite in art and nature and the ethics of beauty. In the above

odes Keats attains to a higher degree of philosophic thought than in any other of his poem. It

touches the philosophy of art and the ethics of human life. To Keats , beauty is the touch –

stone of truth. In this connection Mathew Arnold says “To see things in their beauty is to see

things in their beauty”.

3. ART VS REALITY IN THE ODES OF KEATS:

Keats wants to covey that the joy of life in fact make man melancholic because joy ,by its
nature is something short –lived ,fleeting and something 5that will soon be dead. So, long
run joy causes human sorrows. On the other hand whoever the person may be ,doesnot
matter his/her aesthetics may be derives pleasure from the nature itself. It may be the
pleasure of moment or it may be a long lasting joy, nature is the soul source of all the
pleasure.

Poetry is the expression of the poet’s own experience of life. In ode to

Gracian Urn , “Urn” is a permanent piece of art. It has immortalized even those objects
that have been carved upon it like the piper, the lover , and the trees. Man must come back
to the world of imagination. Urn is a speechless “silent form”. The lover on the urn ,
through immortal cant experience the warmth and intensity of love that one can enjoy in
real life. The lover on the Urn will always remain a speechless entity. He is immortal but
at the same time he is dead.In ode to Gracian Urn , the central symbol is Urn. The
respective piece of art in the case of Urn , can be regarded as a permanent manifestation of
perfect beauty. Consequently , the Urn doesn’t only stand for eternity and art but also for
nature and love. In the ode to Gracian Urn , the fact of age ,sickness, grief , and the sharp
awareness that natural beauty is exquisite but also painfully transient.

Shelly said “A poet is a nightingale, who sits I darkness and sings to

cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds; his auditors are as men entranced by the melody
of an unseen musician, who feels that they are moved and softened yet know not whence
or why.”

The ode to nightingale has two comparisons to make. The first is between the

immortality of the nightingale, the bird that “ wast not born for death” and the

mortality of all that is human

“where youth grows pale “

“where beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes or new Love/ Pine at them beyond

tomorrow.”The second comparison is between the miseries of the world of man

and the complete joy and serenity of the world of nightingale. The poet wants to
escape to the happy world of the nightingale, but the realities of life are too naked

and hard. He just cannot be with the nightingale for long. A single word ‘ forlorn’

“is like a bell” for him and it tolls him back from the nightingale to his sole self.

His escape is very short lived. His feet are firmly rooted in the world of man to

which, he must return after a brief stay in the world of imagination. In Ode to

Nightingale where Keats shows a deeper concern for the transitoriness of human

values.

Keats Melancholy expresses the joy of human life and the experience

of pain in a parallel mode. Paradoxically enough the poet says that real

melancholy is there in all that is joyful and beautiful. The very idea of joy and

beauty makes one melancholic because the duration of joy and beauty is very

short. They must die one moment or the other. Thus in Ode on Melancholy Keats

presents the realistic world where the poem deals with purely human emotions of

pain and joy.

Ode to Autumn depicts the theme of ripeness, decay and death in

describing the natural cycle of seasons. The poem on the season of mist and

mellow fruitfulness seems to be the results of Keats own maturity of vision. The

transience, and ugliness is all unregreatfully accepted for all parts of permanent

cycle of birth, growth, death and renewal. The poem drew us into the experience,

the poems completeness and unity contribute to an act of moral understanding. On

the other side of the poem is the tragic scene of old age and approaching death.

Here Keats shows the maturity and ripeness as one with old age and decay.

The Odes lacks the organic warmth of life. In spite of its

performances, it is dead like a machine. The realization marks the return of Keats

from the world of art to the world of man and the realities of man.
CONCLUSION:

After a study of these above odes we can conclude that the essential features of

Keats’s odes are their dramatic value. The drama revolves around an interaction between the

pains of real world, on the other hand the joy of the world of imagination. Imagination

recognizes beauty in existing things, but also it is creative force of beauty .He relishes the

sensuous joys but at the same time his mind is wide open to man, the pains and the worries of

man. To sum up, it can be noted that Keats in his odes tries to introduce various themes

including paradoxes such as pain/pleasure, death/life, nature, imagination and beauty and

expression of human agonies, which is the main concern of Keats’s odes,seems to be related

to the social unrests and tensions. The odes grow out of a desire to release from an actual

painful life. Nature was a major theme among the Romantics, but Keats turned natural objects

into poetics images. He looked at nature with the eye of the aesthete, recreating the physical

world, including all living things.

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6. "Free keatspoem : “The ode poems." 123HelpMe.com. 12 Apr 2015

<http://www.123HelpMe.com