Use of Birds in Keats Ode to a Nightingale and Shelleys To a Sky-Lark

Use of Birds in Keats Ode to a Nightingale and Shelleys To a Sky-LarkOf particular interest is the use of wenchs by two romantic poets. washbasin Keats once listened to a bird song and gifted us with his Ode to a Nightingale. The sky-lark inspires Percy Shelley and through his vision of the bird we are privy to its beauty. Birds have endlessly held a signifi firece in human lives. While some animals were companions, others for jade or a source a food, our flying companions held an other-worldly place. They achieved heights impossible to humans -- and sung while they did that. These two poets use a bird as their muse and also symbolically for the human experience. Keats ode begins with his ascertaining drowsy, lackadaisical and sad, as if he were under the influence of a drug. In the soil of his sound judgement he hears the nightingale In some melodious secret plan (1.8) singing joyfully. The first stanza seems to be the beginning of an awakening. The poet is lost in his suf fer world, in a drugged state, where the only sound allowed to enter is the birds song. only if in a saddened state a person can feel isolated and withdraw from others. In the first part of this stanza Keats conveys this solitary depression, where the mind is so overwhelmed with preoccupation that the outside world cannot intrude. This is similar to someone macrocosm told devastating news and that person walks about in a daze, plane to the point of walking into traffic without realizing it. The foster part reveals a spirit of redemption. Something from outside the mind is allowed to enter the consciousness. A healing of the mind can happen and the song of a bird is the catalyst. This melancholy is carried over into the second stanza and the poet speaks of wanting to leave the worl... ...eats lacks resolution his poem is slightly disturbing. While the lector can discern seeds of happiness in Keats poem, it never fully develops. both(prenominal) poets though convey a sense of being one with the bird. In effect the birds become anthropomorphic. It is interesting to see how these poets use their imagination to seemlessly aggregate human life with the respective birds. Works CitedHeyen, William. In Consideration of Percy Shelley. southerly Humanities Review Spring. 1983 131-42.Jarrell, Randall. The Profession of Poetry. Partisan Review Fall. 1950 724-31.Knight, G. Wilson. Percy Shelley and the Poetry of Vision. crude York Barnes and Noble Inc., 1960.Maurer, Robert E. Notes on John Keats. John Keats A Collection of overcritical Essays. 1972 79-99. Williams, Meg Harris. Inspiration in Milton and Keats. Totowa Barnes and Noble Books, 1982.