"Keats characteristically gives visual form to the idea that human life is soon over"Do you agree? You should base your answer on: 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' and a poem of your choice.

Authors Avatar

“Keats characteristically gives visual form to the idea that human life is soon over

Do you agree? You should base your answer on: ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and a poem of your choice.

John Keats is well known for his escapism-based poetry. Critics argue that this escapism is Keats way of escaping life and death, the latter, a subject well experienced by the poet. However, this could also be the basis behind Keats attitude that human life is ‘short-lived.’ Loosing his father at the age of eight and his mother to tuberculosis at fourteen, it is perhaps no wonder that he has this attitude. Within the poems ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘To Autumn’ Keats gives visual form to the idea that human life is soon over. He does this through detailed descriptions of sensation.

        In both ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘To Autumn’ Keats begins with an apostrophe, addressing both with respect. Personifying the Urn, Keats praises it. He calls it the “foster child of… slow time” and this shows the greatness of immortality against the mortality of human life. This comparison highlights Keats belief that human life is too soon over.        

Join now!

        Keats in ‘To Autumn’ personifies the autumn, however not for the same reason. He appears contradictory to his attitude in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ portraying short life as a good thing. Throughout the poem Keats visually illustrates the abundance of the autumn. He describes how the “summer has o’er-brimm’d…” with abundance through the repetition of “more” and the constant use of ‘o-sounding’ words representing the “plump…relaxed” ripeness of the harvest. Keats even places a rhyming couplet at the penultimate lines of each stanza, representing the fact that not even the poem can contain the profusion. It’s incomplete. All of the ...

This is a preview of the whole essay