Keats Transeince and Eternal Beauty

Transience of time and Desire for eternal beauty in Keats poetry
John Keats, an Escapist, tearing with the sufferings of life, escapes form the real world to
the realm of the imagination. But there is a striking contrast between the world of reality,
in which the poet lives really, and the world of the imagination where he wants to be.
Now we will discuss the conflict between these two worlds as we found it in his poems,
especially “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, “Ode to the Nightingale” and “Ode to melancholy.”
In the world real, happiness, beauty, love and youth is transient in imaginary world
everything is beautiful and permanent. “Ode to the Nightingale” shows a conflict clear
between happiness and immortality of the species and of the misery and the mortality of
human life. The poem begins with a description of the effect of the song of a Nightingale
in the body and the soul of the poet. As the poet says:
“my heart and a drowsy numbness pains.
My sense as though of hemlock had drunk “
The song of the Nightingale, the poet, is a symbol of eternal joy.” The world of the
Nightingale is the ideal to him. Fatigue, fever and the fret of reality made him unhappy.
Want to disappear to dissolve in the real world where as the poet says:
“… Youth grows pale and thin the spectrum and dies,
where but it’s to be full of sadness”
By which to be free from the belter and painful reality of life the poet wants to escape to
the forest dream with Nightingale. As he says;
“away! Away! To fly to you “
In its forest of imagination, the poet is sensual enjoyment of his life that he wants to have
in an ideal world.” This extremity of joy also reminds you of the death. As we see in the
poem:
“now more then ever seems rich to die.” “ in such ecstasy.”
The poet now contrasts the mortality of the human being with the immortality of the
Nightingale. The song of the Nightingale, the poet heard today was heard in the old time
by emperors and clowns. Also heard in the land of the fairies where-
“ tables casements, opening of dangerous seas, land of fairy foam is the magic.”
The same world ‘forlorn’ as a campaign brings back form world fency to the real world. It
is the poet, like a dream. As he says;
“was a vision or a dream walking? “
run away is making music wake or sleep”.
By that in the poem are a dynamic contrast between an imaginary world and the real
world full of pain.as an in ‘ Ode to the Nightingale, in the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Weir find a contrast between the permanence of purity, beauty and joy in the ballot box
and the storms of the joy of the world read. As says the poet;
you were still made to bride of quietness! “
Te foster child of silence and cal slow”.
in the imaginative world of art the bride is Virgin for ever, but the world is real is
impossible. Keats also contrasts the permanence of art with the fleeting nature of real life.
As the poet, says
“she cannot fade,… always with your love, and she be fair.”
in life real beauty and love are short in duration. Here the beloved ages with the passing
of the years and loses its beauty. But the girl in the URN, which is a work of art, never
aging and stay young forever.
“Ode to melancholy” is another poem with the odd dilemma of life. The poet says that the
melancholy lives in beauty and happiness. We enjoy when they think that it will end
soon. The duration of the beauty makes us unhappy. melancholic, according to the poet-
«Mora with beauty that must die». the poet, melancholy Mora with the goddess of
pleasure in the same Temple. As says the poet;
“… in the same Temple of pleasure veiled melancholy…”
shows the relationship between pain and pleasure, joy and sadness of the transience and
permanence. We can finally say that the world of the imagination we can accommodate
for a short time, but cannot give us better reality solution. So everyone has to face the
contrast between these worlds and finally return to the real world.
The tension between transient and permanent recurrently features as dominant theme in
the Odes. In Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode on a Grecian Urn” , Keats underlines the
transient nature of human life. In the poems, the transience of life has been put in stark
contrast to the permanence of art. The nightingale is the symbol of art and beauty, the
chief characteristic of which is permanence. It is a universal and undying ‘voice’. In “Ode
on a Grecian Urn”, the mutability of life is contrasted with the permanence of art typified
by the marble urn. The permanence of the picture on the Greek fringe is contrasted with
the decay and change of real human actualities, with the world where everything is
undergoing a never-ceasing change.

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Transience of time and Desire for eternal beauty in Keats poetry

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