Since beauty was the only solace that Keats found in life, it became the dominant theme of Keats’s poetry. Keats is the most romantic poet. The recollection of something beautiful conveyed joy to him, as he wrote in the opening lines of Endymion: “A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. Other themes of Keats’ Poetry are Ideal in preference to Reality, Pleasure as opposed to Pain, The Inevitability of Death, Immortality rather than Mortality, and The Contemplation of Beauty.
Major Themes in Poetry of John Keats
Ideal in preference to Reality:
In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker emerges from a trance after listening to the nightingale’s song and wonders if it changed into a dream or reality. This confusion happens in a few of Keats’ odes and is frequently located by disappointment at having to move back to real life.
He even mentions in “Nightingale” and “Ode on Melancholy” that he might as a substitute be beneath the effect of alcohol or a drug as a way to avoid truth.
Pleasure as opposed to Pain:
Many of Keats’s odes are connected to a few components he finds particularly lovely, which include the goddess Psyche, the art on a Grecian urn, or a nightingale creating a song within the woodland. In “Ode on Melancholy,” the speaker creates a listing of factors that might be lovable and bring delight as an antidote to disappointment.
In addition, he advises readers that the altar of Melancholy is within the shrine of Delight, and that to understand one is to really be given the opportunities that exist.
The Inevitability of Death as a Theme of Keats’ Poetry:
Even in advance of his evaluation of terminal tuberculosis, Keats targeted on lack of lifestyles and its inevitability in his paintings. For Keats, small, slow acts of demise befell each day, and he chronicled these small mortal occurrences.
The end of Lovers encompasses, the photographs on a historical urn, and the reaping of grain in autumn-all of those are not the handiest symbols of lack of life, however, times of it. As a writer, Keats hoped he should stay prolonged sufficient to acquire his poetic dream of becoming as remarkable as Shakespeare or John Milton.
Immortality rather than Mortality:
Keats frequently worries about how long a poet’s words can stay after the poet himself has died. In “Ode to a Nightingale,” the speaker wistfully yearns to have the immortality of the nightingale’s song. He then vows he’s going to do his superb to explain it using his poetry.
In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker admires the immortality of the figures decorating the urn in preference to the fast-lived mortality of the mortals who recognize the vessel.
The Contemplation of Beauty as a Theme of Keats’ Poetry:
In his poetry, Keats proposed the contemplation of beauty as a way of delaying the inevitability of dying. Although we want to die sooner or later, we are able to choose to spend our time alive in aesthetic revelry, searching for stunning gadgets and landscapes.
Unlike mortal beings, cute topics will never die however will maintain demonstrating their beauty all of the time. Keats explores this idea in the first book of Endymion (1818).
