In feeling of ecstasy, which would then

In Keats’ and Shelley’s Romantic poems, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to the West Wind, both poets use ode form and other aspects of Romantic poetry to develop their theme of mortality. The Romantic Movement in England can be divided into two generations, those of the 1770s and 1780s and the those of the 1790s. Keats and Shelley were of a part of the second generation poets in the 1790s. Poets of this time emphasized on the significance of one’s self, human emotion, and the importance of nature. Poets of this generation retained their hopefulness regarding revolutionary politics unlike the first generation. Romantics glorified ancient Rome and Greek mythologies and their traditional forms of poetry. Shelly and Keats use the ode form and other elements of Romantic poetry to develop themes and intuition into life and human nature.

In John Keats’ poem, The Ode to A Nightingale, the audience is first introduced to a disoriented, sorrow stricken speaker who yearns to listen to the Nightingale’s euphoric song. Keats’ uses of symbolism is first introduced to us as we learn more about the Nightingale’s worry-free nature and its inability to comprehend mortality, symbolizing all that is good.  The speaker then desires to drink for a feeling of ecstasy, which would then allow him to forget the life’s morbid nature. He promises to follow the Nightingale through poetry rather than through a drunken stupor, although his thoughts may sometimes misguide him.

After taking this vow to the Nightingale, he stumbles into a forest where all moonlight is hidden by an overabundance of trees. Though the speaker cannot see within this darkness, his senses allow him to conceptualize the  foliage surrounding him. Within this tranquility he craves to die a painless death to the Nightingale’s song, After this, he uncovers the Nightingale’s true nature, that the Nightingale had sang this charming song for centuries, it flies away.

Confused and bewildered, the speaker is left contemplating the difference between his dreams and the reality. Throughout the duration of Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem, “ Ode to the West Wind,” the speaker of said poem is constantly asking the West Wind to share its abilities with him. An abundance of accolade for the wind is spewed by the speaker throughout the text. This works as a means to invoke said spirit in order for a new spirit within the speaker to emerge. At the moment he is stuck, calling out to the wind so it may free him as well. Frightened of concept of his ideas, his purpose in life, wilting away drives him to resort to a force of nature. As a result of his current mental block the speaker is in a overwrought state and can only visualize himself as the human embodiment of the wind’s spirit due to its free and fierce way of being.

Change is what drives the speaker, and he can only achieve the transformation he desires by using the the West Wind. The wind can bring on a time of solace, although after distress comes a time of happiness, as referenced at the final line of the poem, “ If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?” Both poets, Keats and Shelley, examine the role of nature, mortality, and emotion in their poems. Speakers in both of the poems demonstrate a sense of moroseness due to their sense of failure and turn to nature for a solution. Mortality is questioned since their misery seems eternal.

The two poems introduce a feud between optimism in Nightingale and pessimism in the West Wind.