A Thing of Beauty Is a Joy for
`A thing of beauty is a joy forever`. How far and in what ways does Keats communicate this belief in his odes. Emotion was the key element of any Romantic poet, the intensity of which is present in all of Keats poems. Keats openly expressed feelings ignoring stylistic rules which suppressed other poets. Keat’s poems display a therapeutic experience, as many of his Odes show a sense of struggle to accept, and a longing to search for an emotion which he could feed off for his eternity. As romantics emphasised beauty in order to replace the lack of religion. The quote `A thing of beauty is a joy forever`, I believe tormented him ever since he wrote `Endymion`, the Odes to be discussed are hence almost a progression of thought and understanding of his own beliefs. ‘Ode to Autumn’ is perhaps the greatest of nature poems written , and I can only agree when Cedric Watts wrote that it is a `richly resourceful yet alert and unsentimental’. Keats creates a sumptuousness which reflects the beauty he has found in Autumn. The intonation within the first stanza is almost of excitement, as if this beauty has suddenly unleashed itself onto his senses, its effect is more powerful than the drug induced mood in `Nightingale`. The first line introduces us to the personified autumn. The exclamatory phrase `mellow fruitfulness` heightens the syntax tone immediately and prepares the reader for a stanza rich in tactile and visual images which intensify this opening. The beauty of autumn is emphasised through phrases like; `ripeness to the core`, `swell the gord`, ` o’verbrimmed their clammy cells’. Keat’s use of the adjective `plump` as a verb excels this `ripeness` and together intensifies the beauty, which is emphasised through the repetition of `more` and `still more`. Keats almost forces his subject at us. The central stanza is almost a `breathing space` for the reader, to interact with the poem. Keats creates a hypnotic