This shows the author’s view on beauty. He is ambivalent about the permanence of beauty. Keats believes although there is pleasure in beauty, as he says in Endymion ‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever’, beauty is not perfect everywhere. As he is dying, he sees that beauty in people is ephemeral, unlike the figures on the Urn whose beauty ‘cannot fade’ and the nightingale’s song which is so old it may have been heard by ‘the sad heart of Ruth’, a biblical figure. He takes solace in beauty that doesn’t fade: the beauty of nature and art, like both the vase and the birdsong. This is what helps Keats to have his self-thought theory of negative capability, the movement from doubt and uncertainty towards serenity and fulfilment, as beauty partly alleviates the pain caused by his disease.
The second theme is death. As Keats had tuberculosis, he coughed up blood and suffered from fevers regularly, which makes it impossible for him to forget his impending death. He envied those who could escape it. The figures on the Urn would always have love that is ‘still to be enjoy’d, nature would retain its ‘verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways’ and the nightingale is lucky to not be ‘born for death’. However, in Ode to a Nightingale Keats thinks of a way to escape death. He can ‘fly to’ it through his poetry, which because it is an art, like the urn and the nightingale’s song, it can survive forever.
The structure of both odes is very similar, although Ode to a Nightingale has three more stanzas than Ode on a Grecian Urn. This is because the former examines more ideas than the latter. Each stanza begins with a quatrain, always with the rhyme structure of ABAB. It is followed by a sestet, whose rhyme structure varies, but is at least similar to CDECDE. This mostly strict structure was used so the poet could organise his turbulent emotions. There is a regular rhythm in Ode on a Grecian Urn in iambic pentameter. This is almost the same in Ode to a Nightingale, apart from on the eighth line, where it is in iambic trimeter. This is perhaps to mimic the slightly intermittent sound of a nightingale’s song.
The tone of both odes is similar when compared to other poetry, but each is slightly different. The tone of Ode on a Grecian Urn starts out as questioning: ‘What men or gods are these?’, as the poet tries to understand what is on the vase. Then, the speaker becomes jealous of the ‘happy, happy love’ the urn’s people will always be anticipating. He is also reminiscing of his own youth, where he asked Fanny Brawne to marry him. Unfortunately, he could not marry her at the time because of financial circumstances and later, he grew too ill to ever get married. This is particularly apparent when he depicts a ‘Bold lover’ chasing a girl who can ‘never, never’ be with. Towards the end of the poem, Keats’ tone becomes more solemn as he realises when he and his generation are gone, the urn ‘shalt remain’.
Ode to a Nightingale begins more sombrely than its counterpart, as Keats describes his terrible physical state, partially due to opium: ‘a drowsy numbness pains /My sense’. He then becomes wistful, similar to his emotions during the other ode, as he hankers for ‘a draught of vintage’. Like Ode on a Grecian Urn, he becomes jealous of the nightingale, who doesn’t worry about ‘The weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of humans. The ode then becomes more dark than the other was, as he talks of being suicidal, or ‘half in love with easeful Death’. The poem ends in a dreamy way as it slows, as the poet wonders whether the nightingale was just ‘a vision’.
Keats uses lots of rich imagery in Ode to a Nightingale and Ode on a Grecian Urn, and his use of the five senses makes it more effective. Nature is a motif in both odes, and inspired many composers, writers and artists of the Romantic era. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, the urn’s scene is painted ‘overwrought /With forest branches and the trodden weed’, while the nightingale flies above ’The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild’. In Keats’ odes, nature is a likeness and contrast to himself. It can embody his emotions, like ‘fast fading violets’ and the ode To Autumn represent his short life ahead. Unlike himself, though, nature is eternally beautiful, as after every winter there is a spring.
The inclusion of song in both poems is one way Keats appeals to the reader’s senses. The nightingale sings sings ‘of summer in full-throated ease’ and the vase details a ‘happy melodist’, ‘pipes and timbrels’. Like visual art or his poetry, song will last for longer than himself.
Contrast in Keats’ imagery is common; principally life and death. As Keats not far from his death bed when he wrote his odes, he would have been very aware of life and death. Connected with this would be the ability to live forever and never grow old, something that he could never do. Both poems’ stimuli represent living forever, but only through art. The nightingale is ‘immortal’ and the figures on the urn will still be here ‘When old age… this generation waste’. To enforce this idea, Keats refers to myths, which have already lived on for centuries. He questions what ‘legend’ the Grecian scene has come from and tells the nightingale he will reach eternity through his poetry, not ‘by Bacchus’, the Roman god of wine.
Other contrasts of imagery tie into life and death. For example, the use of noise and silence, especially in Ode on a Grecian Urn, presents the existence of sound as a sign of life and the absence of it as a sign of death. The people on the Urn can hear the ‘soft pipes’ but he cannot, meaning that the urn’s figures are very much alive but Keats is the opposite. This can be seen to a lesser extent in Ode to a Nightingale, where when the nightingale’s song is ‘Fled’, the poet realises he might be very near death.
Another example is the use of hot and cold imagery; hot being alive and cold being death. In Ode to a Nightingale, Keats wishes for wine that has been ‘cool’d a long age’, then later on confesses his want for a quick death. It is possible there is a connection between the two. In Ode on a Grecian Urn, he says the figures’ love is ‘For ever warm’. They have symptoms of love like ‘A burning forehead’ and ‘a parching tongue’. These can be compared to Keats’ feverous symptoms of tuberculosis. Both show that they are alive, and when they go it will because of old age, in the urn’s people’s case, or death, in Keats’ case. More generally, there is a contrast between the coldness of the urn and the warmth of the figures on it. Urns were for people’s ashes, a link between coldness and death. Keats’ main concern are the figures on the urn, as the ode is ‘on’ rather than ‘to’ the urn. They are young, happy and healthy and so connotes life with heat.
A reoccurring word in both odes is ecstasy. The urn’s figures are in a ‘wild ecstasy’, and the nightingale sings ‘In such an ecstasy!’. The phrase is so important, it abandons the stanza’s rhyme structure. As it is an extreme emotion, it can be used for both the deep depression the poet is in and the euphoria his characters are in.
In conclusion, both Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale contemplate, above all, the writer mortality and the use of beauty to soften its effects. The Grecian urn and nightingale, the inspiration for the poet, are both beautiful works of art. The nightingale as well as the insouciant figures on the urn’s contrast with the speaker’s feelings of despair and depression. The speaker is both superior to them, in knowledge and age, but inferior to them, in health and happiness.
