The Power of Human Imagination

In the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet speaks directly to the reader and describes the moving-picture show. There is an imperativeness in the way Keats describes the scene and comments on the action. A passing(prenominal) reading might make one think that he is describing an actual scene he is observing, when in fact what he is doing is describing a scene painted on the side of a Grecian urn. He sees on the side of this urn images of life--people reveling, dancing in the woods, singing, playing music, and so on. The entire image is of a bite frozen in time, a joyous bit in which people are laughing and cavorting and now will be doing so forever because of the way the scene has been captured forever by a long-ago artist.

The scene for the poem is therefore wheresoever the poet has encountered this urn, an the poet is now responding to the images he sees on the urn, to the ideas that the scene brings to his mind, and to the way he feels about those ideas. The audience is the reader, who hears the scene described and who is then treated to the idea evoked in the mind of the poet by this scene and by the way the scene has been frozen in time.

The poet's line of business is simply that the artist has given these people and their actions immortality. In a broader sense, Keats is speaking of the power of art to transform beauty into a larger truth and to give

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

Thou shalt remain, in thick of other woe

The youth on the urn is t gray that he support ne'er leave his place beneath the tree, and that those trees will never be bare--the earthly concern of the urn is always precisely as seen, and for Keats the sadness is that this institution is different. In this world the trees are bare and youth changes to old age and then death.

When old age shall this generation waste,

Keats grabs the aid of the reader with the scratch line line of the poem, a line embodying more of the responses and themes of the poem: "Thou still unravished bride of quietness." This line refers to one infix on the side of the urn, a female about to be ravished but throughout time never existence ravished because the moment is frozen. She exists in an eternal state that can never be changed--the moment will never go forward and can never go back. The poets asks a series of questions in the first stanza which serves to draw the attention of the reader to the various images on the side, to the issues being raised, and to an apparent puzzle at this stage--why is the poet asking these questions? This is answered in the job of the poem. The poet describes many of the images and speculates about the melody unheard, the moment unfinished, and the youth unfulfilled. eternity is evoked again and again and compared with the transitory nature of this world:

Ordercustompaper.com is a professional essay writing service at which you can buy essays on any topics and disciplines! All custom essays are written by professional writers!