One of the most beloved among English poets is a man who died at the young age of twenty-five. John Keats was an English Romantic poet and despite his tender years, he was a master of imagery. It’s amazing to me that during his short life, he published only fifty-four poems. These weren’t silly, insignificant works (speaking to myself, here) but strong, robust poems of substance.
Keats wrote a series of odes for which he has earned some fame. Among these odes, Ode On A Grecian Urn was published anonymously in 1820. Through his use of classical Greek art, Keats contemplated transcendent concepts like the soul, nature, eternity, and as Ode On A Grecian Urn clearly shows, the curious relationship between Beauty and Truth.
Finding the sonnet form too constrictive for his tastes, Keats turned elsewhere and chose the ode form as his means for poetic expression. Continue reading “The Principle of Beauty”