John Keats Treasure Hunt (Section 3): Poems

What is an Ode?

• Lyric poetry
• Originally accompanied by dance and music
• Later became a typical mean by which Romantic poets transmitted their deepest feelings
• Elevated style
• Usually has an elaborate stanza pattern
• Often praises people, the arts of music and poetry, abstract concepts, or natural scenes

Keats' Odes

• Ode to Apollo (1815) "In thy western halls of gold"
• Robin Hood- To a Friend  (1818) "No! Those days are gone away,"
• Lines on the Mermaid Tavern (1818) "Souls of Poets dead and gone,"
• Ode to a Nightingale (1819) "My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains"
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819) "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness!"
• Ode to Psyche (1819) "I wandered in a forest thoughtlessly,"
• To Autumn (1819) "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,"
• Ode on Melancholy (1819) "No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist"
• Ode on Indolence (1819) "One morn before me were three figures seen,"
• Ode to Fancy/Fancy (1820) "Ever let the Fancy roam,"
• Ode (Bards of Passion and of Mirth) (1820) "Bard of passion and of Mirth"

Some themes in Keats' poetry, and some of the poems in which they appear in

1. Beauty (the contemplation of beauty): Ode on a Grecian Urn ("Beauty is truth, true beauty") ; Ode to a Nightingale ("But being too happy in thine happiness")
2. The passing of Time: Ode on a Grecian Urn ("When old age shall this generation waste,/Thous shalt remain); To Autumn ("Where are the songs of Spring?")
3. The mortality of human life: Ode to a Nightingale ("Where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies"); When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be ("(...) I may never live to trace/Their shadows")
4. Connection vs. separation: Ode on a Grecian Urn ("Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave"), To Autumn ("To bend with apples the moss'd cottage trees")

Synaesthetic images

What are they? Combining more than one sense in one image (the senses are: sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell), resulting in attributing the characteristics of one sense to another

What is their function? They captivate the reader with their sensual effect. In addition, combining different senses in one image gives the impression of how all life is a mixture of the combining of these senses.

Example: "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil" (stanza XLIX): "And taste the music of that vision pale"

Combines visual images (someone pale), with the hearing sense (hearing what we see is a metaphor), with taste (adds liveliness to the "music of that vision", it's a metaphor)

Poetic Ballads: what they are and some characteristics

• Alternate lines of four and three beats
• Often in quatrains
• Rhymed ABAB
• Often tell a story

Reading of "La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

Part 1

Part 2