What comparisons can be made between Keats “Ode to a Nightingale” and “Ode to Melancholy?
mwestwood Teacher Community / Jr. College Notwithstanding the obvious comparison that both poems are odes–lyric poems of elaborate form and exalted or enthusiastic emotion–both works are Romantic in nature, exhibiting a typical characteristics. For one thing, they find beauty in simplicity and plainness as well as in human emotions. Keats reflects on the “sweet-unrest” of his feelings in communion with Nature in both odes, accepting melancholy as a desirable experience. In lines 15-18 of “Ode on Melancholy,” the poet urges his reader to glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,/Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave,/ Or on the wealth of globed peonies; In another juxtaposition, Keats contrasts positive feeling with melancholy in lines 21-25: 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 Similarly, in “Ode to a Nightingale, Keats makes this same juxtaposition, the sim
