Keats

John Keats, one of the greatest English poets and a major figure in the Romantic movement. Keats was known especially for his love of the country and sensuous descriptions of the beauty of nature, and his poetry reflected this. All of the Romantic poets in these past passages seem to have a lot in common with friendships and early death. Like everyone else Keats was friends with other romantic poets like Shelley, but he was different in that he was not an aristocrat. One of his most famous works 'Ode to a nightingale' is a meditation on the purity of the bird's song. Its relentless pathos reminds Keats, still haunted by the painful death of his brother, of the inevitable sadness of man's mortality. Even though Keats was not rich, and he experienced death throughout his life he still continued to work on poems that focused on the beauty of things such as song, or ancient urns in this case. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" describes a perfect scene of beauty and peace dotted with logical facts regarding truth, beauty, and eternity. The scenes on the urn are frozen in time or in their perfect form, as only an artist, or a poet, could depict them. Keats asserts, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter". Music exists in perfection only in art. Any attempt to replicate it lessens its beauty. He writes of "happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed / Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu". In the perfect world, youth, equal with beauty, can only exist in the artist's mind. As it progresses, it loses its perfection. The final stanza concludes the poet's thoughts with an eternal suggestion that perfection exists, Beauty exists and "that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know". In other words, learn that perfection exists and don't worry about figuring out the rest.