“On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” was written by John Keats in October 1816. Chapman, George Chapman is who translated the works of Homer, the great Greek poet “father of poets”. This poem is in the form of a sonnet which has fourteen lines. It was considered Keats’ first major poem, and it is about poetry, it includes a metaphor, “travell’d through the realms of gold” which is one of Keats’ poetic techniques which means Keats read lots of books and it is what inspired him. This poem includes an image of a Spanish soldier and adventurer Cortez and his men staring at the Pacific (Cortez conquered Mexico in 1519 meaning he was more a warrior than explorer. This shows Keats’ own ambitions as a poet). In this poem Keats talks about circumnavigating the world of literature and he explains in detail, what books he is reading. which is what makes this poem more interesting. The main theme of is this poem is discovery, where Keats is talking about his discoveries in his books.
The first quatrain of the poem tells us how Keats’ discovers the world and he includes many poetic techniques which make the poem more interesting. The first line starts with, “Much have I travell’d”. It includes an inversion which puts emphasis on “Much” which tells the reader how much he has read. Secondly “travall’d”, this is a metaphor for reading and it is a poetic technique that makes the poem more interesting. In the second line Keats is talking about what kind of places he has been to. “And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;” “goodly” is another metaphor for worthy literature. “states” and “kingdoms” are also metaphors telling the reader what kind of places he has been. In the third line, “Round many western islands have I been” Keats is telling the...
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...mage is about the opening up of the world – sharing the experience with his men. Keats is sharing the his insight with the readers. The last line of the poem, “Silent, upon a peak in Darien”, has comma which allows the reader to pause and take in the effect of the discovery of the mountain top in Darien. Keats, in the last part of the poem (sestet) has said many poetic techniques which have made the poem more interesting. Like inversions, similes and parenthesis.
The poem “On first looking into Chapman’s Homer” is about Keats travelled through the world of literature with his books. He is teller the reader in full detail about his journeys through his books and sharing with the reader his insight towards where has been. This poem is full of poetic techniques which have made the poem more interesting and Keats has successfully described the experience of his travels.
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
Imagine you were the rose trying to grow in concrete; would you have made it out or die trying or maybe you just gave up. So think about it, what would you have really done? The poem “The Rose that Grew from Concrete” is about a rose that grew in concrete a metaphor that shows that you have to get past your problems to succeed. And the poem “Mother to Son” is about a mother explaining how hard life is a metaphor. Both poems share the theme of You have to rise above the obstacles, but the way the authors developed the theme was similar and different.
In his sonnet "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles for the First Time," John Keats presents a series of various forms of conflict and tension. Most prominent is the poet's sense of his own fleeting existence juxtaposed with the eternity of the Greek marble sculptures and, perhaps, with the timelessness of art in general. However, there is another, more subtle tension between what is in existence, and what is not, an absence which paradoxically manifests as a form of existence in itself. The presence of this conflict within the sonnet shows Keats's self-coined Negative Capability, the ability to be in "uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason" (Keats 863). Furthermore, the Negative Capability exemplified here is produced by the speaker's empathetic experience with the ruins of the Greek sculptures, which he appreciates in their entirety, not only for the fragments which have physically remained intact, but also for the lost portions and details, which are an essential element of their ruinous state.
...tion between loneliness and death. The first three lines of each stanza in this poem generally have four feet, while the last line have only two or three. This change calls attention to the last line, in which Keats makes references to images.
The poem "On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again" by John Keats is a sonnet about Keats' relationship with the drama that became his idea of tragic perfection, and how it relates to his own struggle with the issues of short life and premature death. Keats uses the occasion of the rereading this play to explore his seduction by it and its influence on himself and his ways of looking at himself and his situation in spite of his negative capability.
The key ingredient in this structure is that it is centered on the role of the human, for even though Romantic poetry is abundantly rich with descriptions of the natural world, Romantics are "humanists above all," describing the outer physical world only as it relates to man's self-reflective condition (202). This accounts for Wordsworth's fear that an all-consuming observation of the material world would "tyrannize over the mind and imagination" (202). But to fully explicate his definition of the greater Romantic lyric, Abrams turns not to Wordsworth but to Coleridge as the main focal point, for Coleridge is its chief author and innovator, having brought forth the Romantic lyric in "The Eolian Harp" in 1796, a full two years before Wordsworth's "Tintern Abbey" (204).
In the second stanza Keats demonstrates his use of nature in poetry. He describes the “night’s starr’d face” which could refer to Keats contemplating the beauty...
Keats fears that he will not be able to accomplish all that he wants to do but he also recognizes how big and grand the world has become and does not want to leave it just yet. Through this recognition he realizes that his goals are meaningless compared to the grand scheme of life. Keats is grateful for the love and passion that he has already experienced and his regret is that he will no longer be able to experience it. Longfellow is regretful of his inaction in his past that is haunted by sorrows and death and thinks that he does not have a future. His overall tone of death is fearful and grim while Keats’s is more appreciative. Similarities in the poems lie in their beginnings, both of which have resentfulness towards the short-lived nature of life. Keats’s fear of ceasing to be parallels Longfellow saying, “half of [his] life is gone”. Keats uses the repetition of the word “before” as an anaphora to emphasize his concern of passing away before he can obtain his literary goals or utilize his opportunity to “ripen the full grain” (College Board). Similarly, Longfellow too expresses his failure to “fulfill the aspiration of [his] youth, to build, Some tower of song with lofty parapet.” The overall tones and emotions of each poem are similar but each underscores different situations and
The first stanza of the poem serves as an introduction to the reader. It tells of how the poet invisions her men...
John’s life was full of numerous difficulties many people would not have been able to handle. However, Keats was able to go on with his life and instead, wrote his emotions paper and thus produced 19th century classics. When he writes, Keats puts all of his feelings and emotions into his work. Those emotions can be traced throughout the poem and they contribute passion to his works. Using this style, Keats crafted some of the best poetry ever created. It is for these reasons that the once heavily despised John Keats’s poems have become a staple in English classes and some of the most studied poems in the English language
Literature, as does philosophy and art, follows a continuous wave; with every the crest of a new era, there is a trough from the pervious era. When a new age of style and ideals surfaces, the ideas are often directly against the ideas of the previous period. The Romantic period was an era of emotion, it was no longer about logic or preciseness as it was during the time of Enlightenment period. Both artists and poets of the Romantic period, like John Keats, focused on the expression of feeling and demonstrated an affinity for nature. In John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” Keats brings to life images displayed on an ancient urn. The images, that become displayed in our minds, are of beauty, love, and happiness, all which have been conserved throughout the years despite the rise and fall of civilizations and kingdoms. This creation parallels the seemingly ideal and eternal world depicted on the urn, with the world Keats was born to live in. The truth that is extracted from this poem provides both answers and mysteries that, as T.S. Elliot explains, can either be seen as a “blemishing” factor or something truly profound. If it had not been for the upbringing Keats had growing up, his work would not have captured the same mastery it does now that is seen in his manipulation of sound, and use of rhetorical devices.
The first stanza begins with Keats painting a picture of Autumn as being a “season of mist and mellow fruitfulness”. This is used in conjunction with the use of the image of a “maturing sun” which ripens the Autumn harvest of views and the fruits. The excessiveness of the Autumn harvest is achieved with the use of hyperbole. He describes the fruit being ripened to the core, the gourds are swelled, the hazel nuts plumped and trees bend from the weight of the apples. So the first stanza describes quiet vividly the fullness and abundance of life.
Many poets were around during the Romantic period that were beginning to write differently about the changes in society during the nineteenth century. The combination of syntax, rich language and imagery makes John Keats’ publications recognizable even in current times. Not all poets were able to write about life the way this author did, even with the tragedies that he experienced. John Keats produced some of the finest works of poetry to capture the upcoming ideas of imagination and changes in society during his
Keats is one of the greatest lovers and admirers of nature. In his poetry, we come across exquisitely beautiful descriptions of the wonder sigts and senses of nature. He looks with child-like delight at the objects of nature and his whole being is thrilled by what he sees and hears. Everything in nature for him is full of wonder and mystery - the rising sun, the moving cloud, the growing bud and the swimming fish.
This paper will explore the common analytical symbolism in William Butler Yeats poem "The Second Coming” written in 1919. In addition this paper will also discuss a background of the source of its symbolism. This symbolism can only be understood in the context of the essence of his life. Various scholarly analysis correlate its symbolism to his book “A Vision" written in 1925 and later revised in 1937. In his book "A Vision" Yeats does provide explanation of his esoteric system but the book is not limited to his symbolism, and certainly would be a study onto itself. For the purpose of this paper some knowledge of Yeats symbolism clarifies elements in the poem "The Second Coming” and will be provided. This being his most analyzed poem, there are as many interpretations as there are critics and analysis and there are many. Some interpretations, while interesting do not correlate the poem to his esoteric system have chosen to focus on a more scholarly analysis.