Two hundred years ago in the spring, summer and autumn of 1819, John Keats, just 23 years old, wrote six poems. These lyrics, the ‘Ode to Psyche’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’, ‘Ode on Indolence’, ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, ‘Ode on Melancholy’ and ‘To Autumn’, now have an almost mythical status. The poems are known collectively as Keats’s Great Odes, and 1819 is sometimes called his Great Year because of the brilliance of his creative output in those months.
Many readers love these poems for their sensuous, onomatopoeic language. An imagined cup of wine has ‘beaded bubbles winking at the brim’ (‘Nightingale’, line 17), a detail evoked by the words and the letter sounds of the line. A warm night is described synaesthetically as ‘embalmed darkness’ (‘Nightingale’, line 43), simultaneously solid, scented and empty of light. Yet, as well as their descriptions which engage our senses, Keats’s odes get us thinking. Some readers value them for their philosophical reflections, while others relish how they grant us access to the poet’s inner thoughts, at once delighted by beauty and the power of artistic creation but also melancholy, numb, self-doubting and, at times, wishing for death or oblivion.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
