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“To Autumn”

Reference: These lines have been taken from “To Autumn” by 19th-century English romantic poet
John Keats.

Context: "To Autumn" is the final work in a group of poems known as Keats's "1819 odes". "To
Autumn" describes, in its three stanzas, three different aspects of the season: its fruitfulness, its labour
and its ultimate decline. It celebrates the idealised world of man and nature working in harmony.
Through the stanzas there is a progression from early autumn to mid autumn and then to the heralding
of winter. Parallel to this, the poem depicts the day turning from morning to afternoon and into dusk.
These progressions are joined with a shift from the tactile sense to that of sight and then of sound,
creating a three-part symmetry which is not present in Keats's other odes. These lines are a part of
stanza ........ and depict.........

Explanation: (Write following lines after given explanation for the lines.)
The structure of these lines acutely hints at the structure of the ode which consists of three stanzas,
each of eleven lines. Like others of Keats's odes written in 1819, the structure is that of an odal hymn,
having three clearly defined sections corresponding to the Classical divisions of strophe, antistrophe,
and epode.The stanzas differ from those of the other odes through use of eleven lines rather than ten,
and have a couplet placed before the concluding line of each stanza. To Autumn" is written in iambic
pentameter (but greatly modified from the very beginning) with five stressed syllables to a line, each
usually preceded by an unstressed syllable. Keats varies this form by the employment of Augustan
inversion, sometimes using a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable at the beginning of a
line.

Critical and scholarly praise has been unanimous in declaring "To Autumn" one of the most perfect
poems in the English language. A.C. Swinburne placed it with "Ode on a Grecian Urn" as "the nearest to
absolute perfection" of Keats's odes; Aileen Ward declared it "Keats's most perfect and untroubled
poem"; and Douglas Bush has stated that the poem is "flawless in structure, texture, tone, and rhythm"
Ode to a Nightingale
Reference: These lines have been taken from “Ode to a Nightingale” by 19th-century English
romantic poet John Keats.

Context: "Ode to a Nightingale" is a personal poem that describes Keats's journey into the state of
negative capability. The nightingale described within the poem experiences a type of death but does
not actually die. Instead, the songbird is capable of living through its song, which is a fate that humans
cannot expect. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and that death is an
inevitable part of life. In the poem, Keats imagines the loss of the physical world and sees himself
dead—as a "sod" over which the nightingale sings. The contrast between the immortal nightingale and
mortal man sitting in his garden is made all the more acute by an effort of the imagination. The
presence of weather is noticeable in the poem, as spring came early in 1819, bringing nightingales all
over the heath. These lines are a part of stanza ........ and depict.........

Explanation: (Write following lines after given explanation for the lines.)
The The tone of the poem rejects the optimistic pursuit of pleasure found within Keats's earlier poems
and, rather, explores the themes of nature, transience and mortality, the latter being particularly
personal to Keats. With this theme of a loss of pleasure and inevitable death, the poem, according to
Claude Finney, describes "the inadequacy of the romantic escape from the world of reality to the world
of ideal beauty".[29] Earl Wasserman essentially agrees with Finney, but he extended his summation of
the poem to incorporate the themes of Keats's Mansion of Many Apartments when he says, "the core
of the poem is the search for the mystery, the unsuccessful quest for light within its darkness" and this
"leads only to an increasing darkness, or a growing recognition of how impenetrable the mystery is to
mortals.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”


Reference: These lines are the part of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by 19th-century English romantic poet
John Keats.
Context: Divided into five stanzas of ten lines each, the ode contains a narrator's discourse on a series
of designs on a Grecian urn. The poem focuses on two scenes: one in which a lover eternally pursues a
beloved without fulfilment, and another of villagers about to perform a sacrifice. Other aspects of the
poem include the role of the narrator, the inspirational qualities of real-world objects, and the
paradoxical relationship between the poem's world and reality. (Write couple of lines relevant to lines)

Explanation: (Write following lines after given explanation for the lines.)
The technique of the poem is ekphrasis, the poetic representation of a painting or sculpture in words.
Keats broke from the traditional use of ekphrasis found in Theocritus's Idyll, a classical poem that
describes a design on the sides of a cup. While Theocritus describes both motion found in a stationary
artwork and underlying motives of characters, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" replaces actions with a series of
questions and focuses only on external attributes of the characters.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is organized into ten-line stanzas, beginning with an ABAB rhyme scheme and
ending with a Miltonic sestet. The poem contains only a single instance of medial inversion (the
reversal of an iamb in the middle of a line), which was common in his earlier works. However, Keats
incorporates spondees in 37 of the 250 metrical feet. Caesurae are never placed before the fourth
syllable in a line. The word choice represents a shift from Keats's early reliance on Latinate polysyllabic
words to shorter, Germanic words.

“The Hyperion”
Reference: These lines are the part of “The Hyperion” by 19th-century English romantic poet John
Keats.

Context: Hyperion is an abandoned epic poem. It is based on the Titanomachia, and tells of the
despair of the Titans after their fall to the Olympians. Hyperion relates the fall of the Titans, elemental
energies of the world, and their replacement by newer gods. The Olympian gods, having superior
knowledge and an understanding of humanity's suffering, are the natural successors to the Titans.
Keats's epic begins after the battle between the Titans and the Olympian gods, with the Titans already
fallen. Hyperion, the sun god, is the Titans' only hope for further resistance. The epic's narrative,
divided into three sections, concentrates on the dethronement of Hyperion and the ascension to
power of Apollo, god of sun and poetry. Book I presents Saturn fallen and about to be replaced and
Hyperion threatened within his empire. (Write couple of lines relevant to lines)

Explanation: (Write following lines after given explanation for the lines.)
The language of these lines is very similar to Milton's, in meter and style. Paul Sheats notes Keats's
growth as a poet in the Hyperion’s increasingly restrained use of imagery and intensity of sensation.
Marlon Ross, in examining Keats's patriarchal discourse, suggests Keats attempted to position himself
as a “great poet” through the use of an obtuse language which would distinguish himself from those
poets whose work he mimicked.

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