I wrote this essay in a practice exam last week, leading up to my finals next month. It's quite possibly one of the best things I've written under the duress of time constraints (two essays in two hours - the other was on Hamlet). I got a 17 out of 20 for it, criticisms being a weak opening sentence and the need for clearer structure, perhaps by flagging new paragraphs with a topic or linking sentence. I would very much like to read a 20 out of 20.
I think the poems in question were 'On the Sea', 'Ode to Psyche' and 'Ode on Melancholy'.
-------------------------------
The three poems taken from John Keats' 'Major Works' clearly evoke the themes and motifs that pervade Keats' poetry. Just as Keats' peers, romantic poets, used nature as a vehicle to explore the depths of the human condition, the poet in question does so too. 'On the Sea' begins with the far-reaching imagery of a body that “gluts twice ten thousand caverns”, but gradually the concerns in the poem focalise to end in a specific location addressing the subject as “ye”. This identification of human life can often be surprising in Keats' poems, as the richness of his musings upon nature almost erase the presence of a speaker.
The movement from large images to a specific location also mimics the reoccurring struggle Keats' poems address between imagination and reality. This is evident in the last line of 'On the Sea' as “ye start”, emerging from an inwardly focussed “brood” to the present. This idea can also be seen in the poem 'La belle...' in which the distinction of reality and dreams is almost unidentifiable. Only the notion of impermanence, transience and mortality remains.
In 'Ode on Melancholy', this notion is evident through the image of “Beauty that must die”. One cannot stay in the world of the mind or the present forever; everything, both good and bad will come to pass. Keats uses this notion throughout his works in an effort to champion a somewhat hedonistic approach to life, believing that if you “drown the wakeful anguish”, if you do not feel both sorrow and joy, embrace both pleasure and pain, that you have not fulfilled the potential of all that life has to offer. Those who “burst Joy's grape against [their] palate ... shall [also] taste the sadness of [Melancholy's] might”. This poem links in with 'When I have fears...', another of Keats' poems that explores transience and the fulfilment of potential through the fear that the poet will die before he has reaped his mind of all its creative splendour.
The motif of balance and reciprocation is illustrated in the paradox “pleasant pain” found in 'Ode to Psyche'. One cannot exist without the other, just as the “gentle temper” of the sea could not exist without times when the “winds of heaven” disturb its surface. The advise Keats gives through 'On the Sea' is to rest one's eyes when they are “vex'd and tired”, but “brood” not for long because there is too much beauty and love to be experienced in this world to separate yourself from it for long.
Keats' poetic voice seems to find beauty in everything, not just nature, but also ancient ideas which act as a vehicle for him to express the depth of human emotion. In 'Ode to Psyche' the forgotten Greek Goddess is lamented. Though she is beautiful; a “happy, happy dove”, she has “no voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet”; none that devote themselves to her worship. Through focussing on aspects of beauty that are marginalised in creative culture, Keats encourages his reader's to open their eyes to the omnipresence of beauty in the world. This is also evident in 'To Autumn', a poem that attempts to convince the reader that Autumn is just as worthy of “song” as Spring. Though Spring brings birth, flowers and abundance, Autumn reminds us of our mortality. It reminds us to cherish the present and the beauty of existence because all experience is fleeting.
Thus Keats' use of natural elements to reflect the human condition is entirely apt. His constant references to plants, animals, other worldly creatures and geographical formations weave together to illustrate that beauty and abundance is transient. The “blue, silver-white and budded Tyrian”, the “wild-ridged mountains” and “moss-lain Dryads” will live always in spirit just like the bird in 'Ode to a Nightingale', but not in reality.
Keats uses duality and paradox throughout his poems to explore the contradictions of life and the struggle he constantly experienced between his imagination and his reality. Though the poems were composed in 18th Century England, Keats' works remain relevant today because of the universal nature of the torment that creative minds experience through their art; in both a positive and negative sense.
