Ode to the west wind

ODE TO THE WEST WIND

If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Ode to the West Wind is an Ode wrote by the poet Percy Bysshe Shelley in the 1819, and showed to the public in the 1820. The poet appended a note to it, to explain how the poem was conceived. Through this note we learn that the ode was written in wood near the Arno, one day, when a tempestuous wind blew with all its strength.

The poem is divided into five different stanzas. The first, the second and the third stanzas describe the action of the wind respectively on the earth, in the air and in the sea. The fourth and the fifth stanzas, instead, are a sort of invitation to this natural force; the poet desires that the wind could become his musical instrument for talking to the all mankind.

We have, in the last line of the last stanza, a sort of summary of the Shelly's poetical conception and a revelation of the real intent of the composition that, to a first and superficial reading, could appear just a poetic description and exaltation of the wind. To understand it, in fact, we have to know the background of Shelley poetical production. This poet lived during the period of the Industrial Revolution, and he knew that that was a age marked by the war of the evil against good, the oppressors against the oppressed. So he understood that something had to change in that situation but, describing the action of a wind destroyer and preserver that brings the "winged seeds", he wanted to say that some values had to be preserved from the destroyer force of a rebirth wind. This values are, in particular, Beauty, Love, Freedom, Justice, Equality and Fraternity. Shelley chose a natural phenomenon to convey the necessary rebirth of the society because he thoughts that the nature is not a physical experience, but a sort of invisible power which govern the universe.

In conclusion, analyzing the last line, that brings all the Shelley hope for a new world, a rebirth full of values, is indispensable remember an Eliot thought who, one hundred years later, realizes that, after the Second Mondial War, the seeds "the new men" are not still sprout.

ODE ON GRECIAN URN

Beauty is truth - Truth Beauty- that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

John Keats is, together with Shelley and Byron, one of the greatest Romantic poets who belongs to the Second generation. He lays down, with his Philosophy, the foundation for the following Aesthetic literary movement.

The work Ode on a Grecian Urn is, probably, the one of the works that better show his particular philosophy. The ode is divided into five stanzas in which are described the decoration that are on the urn: a love story and a sort of religious procession for a sacrifice. Also in this poem we could find a summary of Keats poetical ideas and the aim of the ode in the two last lines of it and, also in this case, to understand them we have to know something of Keats life. He was born in a not very rich family and he was really fond to his relative, particular to hi parents, so, when they died he suffered al lot. Following this, during his life he could not marry his true love because of his financial situation and he was seriously ill. In conclusion we notice that Keats's life was not so happy so, his poets, in which he speaks about Beauty and happy, we could see a sort of corner, a private space when the poet shelters when the life in front of him reveals all its wickedness. In Keats opinion the art is life and this science could stop the actions before that are finished, for showing all their beauty. The beauty is, in fact, something that is not finished: on the urn are represented the procession for the sacrifice and not the sacrifice; the love between the two young boy and girl, but not the passion between them, because the passion "leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed, a burning forehead and a parching tongue". But, in contraposition with the begin part of the poem, in the second we have a sort of turning point in the expression Cold Pastoral. In this point, n fact, the poet brings us from the Arcadia again in our society and we could notice that the human life is not perfect like the urn, which is static and not full of strong passions, but is however source of joy. The last lines are refereed not to the truth of the reality but to the truth of art that is a shelter in which the poet could live few moments, because he hasn't got the strength to change the society.