Change, decay, and mortality were some of the most important motifs in Keats’s works and early nineteenth-century Romanticism. He relates death and the passing of the time with nature’s beauty. In some of the odes eternal beauty is achieved by death, and in others the present moment is the opportunity to appreciate nature’s beauty in a more passionate way.
Possibly the fact that John Keats had been witness to the slow and painful deaths of many close relatives from tuberculosis, as had happened with his younger brother Tom the previous winter of the composition of the odes, it has made him more concerned with these three “enemies”.On the other hand Keats was in love with Fanny Brawne, so she could have been the inspiration to appreciate the nature’s beauty in time. I focus on Ode to Autumn and I compare it with Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, and Ode on Melancholy to depict my point of view. The four odes in question have similarities and differences related to these themes. It is not known the order of composition of these four odes.
As far as it is known, we can claim that Ode to Autumn is the last one of the four.It is said that Ode to Autumn is influenced by the daily walk that Keats used to have during his stay in Winchester. This ode has been rated as one of the most distinguished odes of English poetry ever. This is the culmination of Keats’s poetry or maybe a beginning of a new period of his life’s work stopped by tuberculosis and death.
Its lexicon is rich, concrete, and appropriate to show the imagery of the season using a calm tone. There is no discursive language and irony. Language is precise enough to show the features of the season and the ideas of change, decay and mortality.Ode to Autumn deals especially with the three enemies of Keats’s odes. In poetry, when a season is mentioned, time and changes are inevitably implied.
Seasons are a circle of life which has hopeful as well as sorrowful feelings. Decay and mortality are also implicit in Autumn since in this season “of mists and mellow fruitfulness” (Ode to Autumn: stanza 1) nature still carries delight even though worse times are coming in Winter. In Ode to Autumn the poetic persona is not clear. What is clear is the addressee: the autumn. The ode is divided in three stanzas in progression.In the first one a broad description of the wealth of autumn is given, and later on it is descripted as a “changing time” season.
In this last ode, the poetic voice feels more self-confident with these themes in comparison with the previous ones. He can enjoy the beauty of nature and the present moment in which he is living without anxiety about the future, changes, and death as the speaker in Ode to a Nightingale could not do. This speaker does not want to die to feel the eternal peacefulness because when autumn ceases, spring will come again later, even though he prefers to think in the present happy features of Autumn.Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?Think not of them, thou hast thy music too.In Ode to a Nightingale, the poetic voice addresses the nightingale which is personified as death. Both are desirable images to the speaker; they represent happiness, peace, and relief for the reason that death is the peaceful state in which pain stops.
In earthly and mortal life everything decays and dies, youth becomes old, and beauty does not last forever. That makes the poetic voice of Ode to a Nightingale feel sadness if he thinks about the present moment in which he is living. The beauty of the beloved is not endless, it has no “to-morrow”, and this is something sorrowful for the poetic persona.Where but to think is to be full of sorrowAnd leaden-eyed despairs,Where Beauty cannot keep her lustrous eyes,Or new Love pine at them beyond to-morrow.This decay and mortality fact is not sad for the speaker of Ode to Autumn; this life’s matter becomes understandable for him. In Ode on a Grecian Urn the poetic voice addresses the Grecian Urn which is again a representative of the “immortal” world, although now the addressee is an inanimate object; the Grecian Urn cannot move as the Nightingale could do.
The speaker looks at the various paintings on the Grecian Urn: men pursuing maiden women, a piper with his beloved, and a group who have left their city to practice the tradition of sacrifice on a heifer.The three paintings have in common that they cannot move, they cannot change, they are static in time so they will remain forever on the urn and will not die. On the other hand they cannot do things and experience as human beings can do. The love of the piper with his beloved will never decay or suffer change; his songs will not change, and will continue to be new.
However, he will never be able to kiss her with that “parching tongue” and feel human passion.And, happy melodist, unwearied,For ever piping songs for ever new;More happy love! More happy, happy love!For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,For ever panting, and for ever young;All breathing human passion far above,That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.his static condition in Ode on a Grecian Urn is far from the idea of Ode to Autumn where everything suffer changes, decay, and die. Differently from Ode to a Grecian Urn the speaker of Ode to Autumn is not preoccupied with beauty in time.
In Ode to a Grecian Urn beauty only could be static as in the paintings of the urn or decaying towards death as in human beings. In this last ode the beauty of nature is subject to the circle of seasons; it ceases and comes back as every animate being; as flowers.The Nightingale and the Grecian Urn are parallel in the fact that their messages remain in time through different generations of humans. This idea is ambiguous when it is compared with Ode to Autumn.
Apparently nothing remains forever in the last ode but when looking deeply we can think that there is one concept that remains in time through different generations of humans: the pattern that seasons follow. We can say, ironically, that is the change which remains.Every human have seen and will see that the four seasons come always in the same order with similar features of the previous years. Everyone can experience that after every autumn the cold winter is coming, but after that, spring and summer will reappear again, and a new autumn will happen after.
At the end of Ode to Autumn it is noticeable in the behavior of animals that winter is coming again: the crickets sing and migratory birds start to move in order to take shelter from the winter. This poetic voice knows the circle that seasons follow by empirical knowledge.In Ode on Melancholy the poetic voice advises the sufferer not to be obsessed with death in the first stanza. The addressee should avoid death symbols as yew-berries, beetle, the death-moth, or the downy owl.
