Sonnet and Odes Journeyed from the Celebration of Love, Metaphysics to Love of Nature

Timeline Treasures

There has been an evolution in romantic poetry. Its two primary specimens are odes and sonnets. Odes and Sonnets are ancient and have traveled from the celebration of love, and metaphysics to the love of nature.

In classical poetry sonnets and odes were love poems and epics were war poems. Homer's epics were war poems. In the era of Greek sonnets topic was love. On the other hand, Odes were accompanied by music, dance, and celebration and they usually conveyed the strongest sentiments and also, it’s about a formal address to some event as well.

In “Ode on the Morning of Christ’s Nativity” Milton is celebrating the birth of Jesus Christ. Milton is seeking help from Muse in this ode because he will write on a great topic. He says that nothing can show the brightness or love of Jesus Christ. Milton has only described the birth and salvation of Jesus Christ. This ode is a great work of Nativity. Using the personification of writing the poem at the first light of day on Christmas morning, an infant looking out his window to witness the arrival of the three orient kings, he presents himself as hastening to compose a “humble ode” to lay at the feet of the Christ child. This poem ranges from the infant Christ asleep in the manger to the image of the pagan gods trooping in defeat into hell at the mere coming of the child.

"Ode; Intimations of Immorality from Recollections of Early Childhood" the joy of childhood and the experience of youthfulness / young age have been described in this ode. The first three stanzas of this ode are into three parts. The  first part is based on the celebration of childhood; the second part is based on the nostalgia of youthfulness shown in these lines

Fresh flowers; while the sun shines warm, and the Babe leaps up on his Mothers' arm: 

A  single field which I have looked upon,

Both of them speak of something that is gone;

Where is it now, the glory and the dream?"

And the third part is based on the reconciliation of childhood as shown in these lines. The poet is trying to vision with the help of imagination. The poet is recalling his childhood through the imagination of a pansy that used to be on his feet when he was young. He says that this part of his life can only be seen through imagination. Through this image, the poet can celebrate the beauty of childhood that’s why the poet’s childhood part is very important to him. He says that it was the best part of his life; he has no worries at that time. The poet’s mind is filled with the consciousness of morality, as opposed to the child’s feeling of Immorality_ which enables him to love nature and nature’s beauty all the more, for each of nature’s objects can stir him to thought and even the simplest flower blowing in the wind can raise in him “thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears”.Ode on a Grecian Urn is an ode in which the speaker addresses an impressive urn and manifests his feelings and ideas about the experience of an imagined world of art, in contrast to the reality of life, change, and suffering. As an ode, it also has the unique feature that the permanently ideal world of the urn is presented in an urn that is a lifeless thing when seen from the viewpoint of real life. But the idea that comes under the domain of imaginative reality is reconciled in the act of imaginative creation of the urn’s legend. Therefore, real life is complemented and enriched by this ideal. Thus, the two domains of the real and the ideal coming into conflict as usual, ultimately reconcile to make a more permanent truth as asserted in the 'truth and beauty' maxim. To sum up, in this ode, Keats begins by idealizing, personifying, and immortalizing a real object. This ideal at first clashes with the real but is reconciled by imagination and insight at the end. The poem begins with an address to the Grecian urn and with almost envious amazement, but it ends with the realization that beauty or ideal is also a dimension of the truth of the real; the beauty of the imaginative experience is a part of reality or truth and the knowledge of all truth is beautiful.In the Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats is trying to say that neither the beauty of nature nor the beauty of art can comfort us with the distress of life. The life of the figures on the urn possesses the beauty; significance, and externality of art; and this, in the third stanza explicitly, and throughout the poem implicitly, is contrasted with the transitory-ness, the meaninglessness, and the unpoetic nature of actual life.

The Ode is constructed pictorially in spatial blocks, for the eyes to take in serially. Keats had a genius for drawing realistic and tangible pictures mostly with an aesthetic appeal. The whole of this poem is remarkable for its pictorial effects. The passion of men and gods, and the reluctance of maidens to be caught or seized are beautifully depicted.

 “Ode to the West Wind” was inspired by a natural phenomenon, an autumn storm that prompted the poet to contemplate the links between the outer world of nature and the realm of the intellect. In five stanzas directly addressed to the powerful wind that Shelley paradoxically calls both “destroyer” and “preserver” (line 14), the poet explores the impact of the regenerative process that he sees occurring in the world around him and compares it to the impact of his own poetry, which he believes can have a similar influence in regenerating mankind.In each stanza, Shelley speaks to the West Wind as if it is a vitalizing power. The first three stanzas form a logical unit; in them, the poet looks at how the wind influences the natural territory over which it moves. The opening lines describe the way the wind cleans away the autumn leaves and carries off seeds of vegetation, which will lie asleep through winter until spring comes to give them new life as plants.

“Thou on whose stream, mid the steep sky’s commotion,

Loose clouds like the earth’s decaying leaves are shed,

Shook from the tangled boughs of Heaven and Ocean,

Angels of rain and lightning: there are spread

Like the bright hair uplifted from the head

Of some fierce Maenad, even from the dim verge

The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirge

Of the dying year, to which this closing night

Black rain, and fire, and hail will burst: oh hear! 

The poet describes the clouds that whisk across the autumn sky, driven by the same fierce wind and twisted into shapes that remind him of Maenads, Greek maidens known for their wild behavior. Shelley calls the wind the harbinger of the dying year, a visible sign that a cycle of nature’s life is coming to a close. The poet uses the third stanza to describe the impact of the wind on the Mediterranean coastline and the Atlantic Ocean; the wind, Shelley says, moves the waters and the undersea vegetation in much the same way it shifts the landscape.

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;

If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;

A wave to pant beneath thy power, and share 

 The impulse of thy strength, only less free

The comrade of thy wanderings over Heaven,

As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speed

Scarce seemed a vision; I would ne'er have striven

As thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.

A heavy weight of hours has chain'd and bow'd

One too like thee: tameless, and swift, and proud.

What if my leaves are falling like their own!

Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,

Drive my dead thoughts over the universeLike withered leave to quicken a new birth And, by the incantation of this verse,Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!

In the final two stanzas, the speaker muses about the possibilities that his transformation by the wind would have on his ability as a poet. If he could be a leaf, a cloud, or a wave, he would be able to participate directly in the regenerative process he sees taking place in the natural world. His words that is, his poetry would become like these natural objects, which are scattered about the world and which serve as elements to help bring about new life. He wishes that, much like the seeds he has seen scattered about, his “leaves” his “dead thoughts” and his poems could be carried across the world by the West Wind so that they could “quicken to a new birth” at a later time when others might take heed of their message. The final question with which the poet ends this poem is actually a note of hope: The “death” that occurs in winter is habitually followed by a “new life” every spring. The cycle of the seasons that he sees occurring around him gives Shelley hope that his works might share the fate of other objects in nature; they may be unheeded for a time, but one day they will have a great impact on humankind.

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