Poetry is often a reflection of the poets emotional state, metaphorically or symbolically written in verse. They create feelings and mood throughout their work by means of the language used, intern helping to create images and the structure of a certain phrase or stanza can help to leave a lasting impression of an idea or emotion. Despair and fear are displayed frequently through poetry. The generation known as The Romantics used vivid description, each with a uniqueness easily recognized, and effectively conveyed the depression and/or fear which the poet is experiencing.
Keats has a very unique style of conveying his ideas, often finding an object, period or person on which to effectively base his story on. In the "Ode to a Grecian Urn," he uses an Urn carved with figures to convey his feelings about the topic of immortality. While he wrote this poem, he knew of his approaching death and has harnessed this emotionally powerful concept whilst conveying his despair. He talks about the people on the Urn as if frozen in time, never to be forgotten, "Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought." Their immortality saddens him as he knows that he will not be immortal as they are, and yet who could have predicted that today we still read Keats" work, that he is still alive in his immortal thoughts and emotions. He describes their silent form: "As doth eternity: Cold pastoral!" and this sudden desperate stab at the immortal carvings ends this relatively pleasant poem with his sorrow, and a change in his feelings about immortality. .
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Another of Keats" works expresses similar feelings about immortality, as it was within a three week period that Keats wrote a series of poems including Ode on a Grecian Urn and Ode to a Nightingale. These were the three weeks leading up to his death, and this is why these issues arose throughout his work, most of them expressing his depression and fear of dying.