A poetic form for philosophical contemplation Essay

‘The Ode is used as a poetic form for philosophical contemplation. ’ Compare two odes by Keats in the light of this observation Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale were written in May 1819, a time in Keats’ life which he devoted entirely to poetry. Both of these poems contemplate the poet’s approaching death, using stimuli of what is on the face of a Grecian vase and the song of a nightingale. There are differences and similarities between the two poems, and both will be looked at in the essay. Both of the above poems are odes. An ode is a form of poetry about emotion. First used by the Romans and Greeks, the form was revived in England in the 17th century. The form was popular among the English Romantic poets. A typical verse of an ode consists of a quatrain with a rhyme structure of ABAB and a sestet with a rhyme structure of CDECDE. However, Keats tended to be more liberal with his rhyme structures in his odes. Keats was born in 1795 and was the last born of the English romantic poets He became interested in poetry through his secondary school headmaster, who introduced him to Renaissance poetry and so the ode. Both of his parents died before he turned fifteen, so he became familiar with loss at an early age. His most famous sets of poems were his odes and these were written as Keats’ tuberculosis worsened in 1819. He died in 1821. There are two main themes in Keats’ odes: beauty and death. It is obvious beauty is looked at intently in Ode on a Grecian Urn, as the urn seems to tell the poet in the second to last line: ‘â€Å"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢. Keats firstly tries to tell the reader what the urn’s figures think of beauty. They see happiness in beauty, as they are in ‘wild ecstasy’ to be with ‘fair’ women and listen to ‘pipes and timbrels’. Because they will be youthful forever, Keats tells them this is ‘all ye need to know’, as ignorance is bliss. Beauty is also looked at in Ode to a Nightingale The nightingale is similar to the urn’s individuals, because it is able is to ‘quite forget’ the horror of old age and can forever fly free above ‘hungry generations’ of people. Unlike the Urn, its ‘plaintive anthem fades’ without actually helping the author in any way.