Predicting the Future
...Death is inevitable and must come to all of us at different times. In the phrase truth beauty, the truth is that John Keats is dying and he will be dead in a few years. He knows this and faces the truth, about his near death. The truth is he can not cheat death, and after he dies he will face his maker and have to deal with the decisions he made throughout his life, good or bad. John Keats had a rough life growing up, where he was surrounded by death. He was born in seventeen seventy-five. When John was nine years old his father was killed from a fall from a horse (Ward 1). At that young age John was exposed to his first dealings with death. Five years after his father’s death, his mother returned to the family and died of pulmonary tuberculosis (a progressive wasting of body tissue). Now with both of John’s parents dead, he was becoming desensitized to death. Finally his uncle also died of pulmonary tuberculosis (Ward 1). Having all of this death around him and he being near his own, the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” could have been written about his previous and near experiences with death. Death is not always a good thing and in most cases bad and very hard to the family involved in it. In the third stanza two lovers are below a tree filled with leaves. In my opinion each tree etched into the urn may represent the number of people that died in John Keats’ life. This stanza makes the poem out to have a very happy tone to it, and I think the tone is more of a sad and depressing one. The poem should not be portrayed as a glorious event, Keats is dying and death is not always a beautiful site. The leaves are also frozen in time, as well as Keats will be in a few years. Also the color of the leaves may have something to do with death, although the color was not really described in the poem. For the sake of the poem let’s assume the leaves are orange-brown and it is fall. This leaves dying in the fall represents the coming death of John Keats. The leaves on the tree or falling to the ground both represent his death. The beginning of the poem describes a picture of a large group of individuals enjoying their selves, living up life. Ironically enough John Keats cannot live up life, because he is dying of tuberculosis. The first few lines of stanza one speaks of a bride of quietness, and of silence and slow time. John Keats is the bride, because he is about to marry death. This quietness and slow passing of time relates to John Keats after he died, and now lies in his grave and rests as time slowly goes by. The untimely death of John Keats came when he was twenty six years old, in the year of 1821. He died of tuberculosis, the same disease as his mother and uncle (Ward 2). Throughout his life he had written many great works, but he felt he had not yet written a work that would leave his mark to the literary world (Ward 3). So he created the work “Ode on a Grecian urn to fill a personal need, and to get ahead in the literary world. One of the lines in a certain stanza contained the quote “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter.” Usually when melodies are heard they are a sign of joy, happiness and life. In this case the unheard melodies are the calls of death. In turn the unheard melodies represent John Keats and his knowledge of his own death. As stanza two progresses two young lovers ...