Ode on Melancholy

Ode on Melancholy 

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist
       Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine;
Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss'd
       By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine;
               Make not your rosary of yew-berries,
       Nor let the beetle, nor the death-moth be
               Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl
A partner in your sorrow's mysteries;
       For shade to shade will come too drowsily,
               And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul.
But when the melancholy fit shall fall
       Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud,
That fosters the droop-headed flowers all,
       And hides the green hill in an April shroud;
Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
       Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,
               Or on the wealth of globed peonies;
Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows,
       Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,
               And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.
She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
       And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
       Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
       Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
               Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
       Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
               And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Lyric Poetry:

     a short poem with one speaker (not necessarily the poet) who expresses thought and feeling. Though it is sometimes used only for a brief poem about feeling (like the sonnet).It is more often applied to a poem expressing the complex evolution of thoughts and feeling, such as the elegy, the dramatic monologue, and the ode. The emotion is or seems personal In classical Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre

               Melancholy:

               "Melancholy Is beyond sad"  Being melancholy means that you're overcome in sorrow, wrapped up in sorrowful thoughts.

Task 4

Stanza one

Both pictures are rather dark, the first impression of the poem is melancholy,  and to show this feeling I choose obscure pictures.

 No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist.

•    River of unmindfulness.
•  Where all those who drank from it experienced complete forgetfulness.

Your  mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl

•    Mourn
•    Wanted to express the pain with this picture.

Stanza two

 Emprison her soft hand, and let her rave,

And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes.

Hypnotic, you feed on her eyes.

Stanza three

 And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips

Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips

To Autumn

Incoming cold, being called by those silky balls,

            Interrupting god’s happy message.

            Lovely creatures coming to hibernate

            Leaves far away from their father.

              Arms suffering pain, waiting for spring to be healed.

To Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,	5
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,	10
For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells.
2. Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;	15
Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,
Drows’d with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers:
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;	20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
3. Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,	25
And touch the stubble plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;	30
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The red-breast whistles from a garden-croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Task Two

2) The similarities that I have found in my poem compared To Autumn, is the personification I give to the nature for example “Arms suffering pain” referring to the trees brunches. John Keats also personify some aspects of nature as for example “…the light wind lives or dies” line 29, here he tries to explain how the wind, during the evening, stop blowing or sometimes it continues as a storm is approaching. The metaphors I’ve used related with nature are very similar as when in the poem says “Close bosom-fried of the maturing sun”. I’ve put “Interrupting God’s happy messages  
 

END Task:

1) How does To Autumn differ from the other poems you have studied?

2) I mentioned in a letter to my old pal Reynolds that the stubble fields in autumn looked "warm" to me. How do I communicate a sense of warmth in my poem?

3) How do I use language to reflect the passage of time and a sense of an ever-changing world in this poem?

Answers:

       
       1)  The poem “To Autumn” is different from other poems, that John Keats have wrote, because he always describes the death and sadness, but in this case we appreciate who coloured and bright "she" is.  The reader can feel that the poem is related with the real world as there are so many concrete images.

2) John Keats uses many literary devices to communicate the sense of warmth. An example could be "maturing sun" or "soft-dying day" , in this case he uses visual and tactile images; the word "soft" tries to communicate to us that is not a freezing day,that make you feel a severe pain.

3) In this case the poet uses a specific vocabulary which reflect the passage of time during the day that is why we concluded that the first stanza is describing the morning, the second represent the afternoon and the last one, the evening("soft-dying day"). He also represents the passage of time by the changing of seasons, an example is "For Summer has o’er-brimm’d their clammy cells".
 

Ideas discussed in class:

• There is a high quantity of nature´s description.(Trees,insects,etc)

• Autumn is personified as a women.
• The description of a day in autumn: Morning, afternoon and evening
• Tone: Amvibalence as it has mixed feelings towards this season

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Production of the Creative Urn

Task 1:

• My friend`s urn is very complete because it contains all the description  that the poet wrote on "The ode on a Grecian Urn"

• They used characters, for the example the priest with the cow, the music produced by the pipes, the girls running away, the voice of the poem with the “youth”.

• They added the nature that the voice describes in the bottom of the urn.

• ·     They missed something important that the one who speaks emphasise as the pipes, the coloured and sweet flowers.  Also an important point in the poem was the water described by him, that they did not putted on the urn 

a)      After reading the poem and making our own urn, I understood the images used by the poet to describe the urn, he used visual, auditory and smell images. For example when the speaker says “…ye soft pipes play on”  here he combines two images as we mentioned before is a synesthetic image here is combined a tactile image “soft” and the auditory image “melodies”.

Moreover some metaphors that could be related with J. Keats death

“When old age shall this generation waste,…” because he questioned and thought  about  death. 

Stantza One

Why is the urn compared to a " still unravish'd bride"?

• "still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.

• "unravish'd" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time.

• The urn is a "Sylvan historian" because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.

• Is it paradoxical that the urn, a "bride of quietness", can tell its stories "more sweetly than our rhyme" (meaning the poem itself)?

• The gentleness of the term "sylvan historian" and his "flowery tale" told "sweetly" do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)

• The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience's relationship with "Art" in general...

Stanza two

"Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!"

In this stanza, the speaker is combining the elements he mentioned, for example the music with the nature.He uses the word "sweet" containing two connotations which are the smell of the flowers related with the enviroment and the sound that the pipes are producing. Moreover the speaker mention the importance of that sounds that are heard and those who are not, in this case he prefer the ones that are not heard (the feelings of the speaker produced by the environment)

                        The idea of  "pipes unheard" is an oxymoron because the word contradicts what the pipes are for and that they can be hear because with the combination of wind they produce a smooth sound.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci

"La Belle Dame Sans Merci"

John William Waterhouse was born in 1849 and died in 1917. He was an English painter, his style was Pre-Raphaelite their intention was to reform art by rejecting what is considered the mechanistic approach first adopts by mannerist artist.

The painter reached what the poem wants to communicate as he painted the girl as a continuation of the nature and  grab the soldier so he stay with her in that world. In my opinion the poem is well described in the painting as he painted the girl with a long and beautiful hair, with a light foot and her eyes were wild that attract the Knight. Also the place where this is happening, this is set in a forest and is related with the characterist of the girl, the grass in a way continues in the dress as the paintor uses similar colours to show that she belongs to that place.Furthermore is important to mention how the knight is distracted from may be the quest he was told to do.

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"La belle dame sans merci" by Henry Maynell Rheam in 1901.

This painting is similar from one Waterhouse have painted because this is set in a forest and it well represet the meaning of the poem that wrote John Keats. At the same time is different because in the painting of Rheam the girl is approaching the Knight, who is sleeping or is dead, but also the girl have similar colours of the nature and she have a flower crown. In my opinion the painting by Rheam is more convincing because the paintor uses fog that represent mistery or the darkness that the poet J.Keats created. 

Rhythm of "La belle dame sans merci"

The rhythm presented in "la belle dame sans merci" is generally iambic tetrameter like the classical poetic ballad