Reading Great Books of Humanities Week 10

1
Reading Great Books of HumanitiesWeek 10

• Romanticism Poetry
• William Blake
• Robert Burns
• William Wordsworth
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• George Golden Byron
• Percy Busshe Shelley
• John Keats

2

• William Blake (November 28, 1757 August 12,
  1827) was an English poet, painter, and
  printmaker.
• Largely unrecognized during his lifetime, Blake's
  work is today considered seminal and significant
  in the history of both poetry and the visual
  arts.
• He was voted 38th in a poll of the 100 Greatest
  Britons organized by the BBC in 2002.
• According to Northrop Frye, who undertook a study
  of Blake's entire poetic corpus, his prophetic
  poems form "what is in proportion to its merits
  the least read body of poetry in the English
  language."

3

• Others have praised Blake's visual artistry, at
  least one modern critic proclaiming Blake "far
  and away the greatest artist Britain has ever
  produced.
• Once considered mad for his idiosyncratic views,
  Blake is highly regarded today for his
  expressiveness and creativity, and the
  philosophical vision that underlies his work.
• He himself once indicated, "The imagination is
  not a State it is the Human existence itself."

4

• While his visual art and written poetry are
  usually considered separately, Blake often
  employed them in concert to create a product that
  at once defied and superseded convention.
• Though he believed himself able to converse aloud
  with Old Testament prophets, and despite his work
  in illustrating the Book of Job, Blake's
  affection for the Bible was accompanied by
  hostility for the established Church, his beliefs
  modified by a fascination with Mysticism and the
  unfolding of the Romantic Movement around him.
• Ultimately, the difficulty of placing William
  Blake in any one chronological stage of art
  history is perhaps the distinction that best
  defines him.

5

• lt???gt(To Autumn)
• ??,?????,???????,??,?????????????????????,????
  ??????????,????????????!??,????????????????????
  ?????,??????????????????????,?????????????????
  ,???????????,??????????????????????????????,?
  ??????,?????,?????????????????????,?????????,??
  ??,?????????????????????

6

• ???(William-Blake,1757?-1827?)??lt???gt???????????,?
  ??????????
• ??????????????,??????????,?????????????
• ??????????,??????,???????????????,??????????!????
  ???????????,??????,??????,??????,???????       
• ???????????,??????????,???????????????????????????
  ???,???????

7

• ????(The Lamb) ?????(The Tiger)???????????,???
  ??????????/????????????
• ????????????????????????????????????(?????????)???
  ?,??????????
• Bryan Aubrey ??? ???????,????????????????????????
  ?????,?????????????????????????,??????????,???????
  ???????
• ???????,?????????????????,??????????????

8

• ????????????,??????????????????,??????????????????
  ?????????????
• ????????????,??????????????????????(trochaic
  meter)?????????(alliteration)??
• Trochee (n.) a measure of poetry consisting of
  one strong (or long) beat followed by one weak
  (or short) beat, as in father (??)(???)???, ???
• ????????????????????????????????????,??????
  ????????,??????????,?????????????????????????????
  ?????????
• ?????Erica Smith?Harold C. Pagliaro???????,???????
  ??????????,??????????????????????????,????????????
  ????,?????????,????????,??????????????????? ?

9

• 18??????????? William Blake?????????????????????
  ????????????????,????,????????????,?????????,??
  ?????

10

• ??????(The Chimney Sweeper)
• ???????????,
• ??!??!?????!
• ??!?????????
• ???????????
•  
• ??????????,
• ?????????,
• ??????????,
• ?????????
•  
• ??????????,
• ??????????,
• ????????????,
• ?????????????

11

• William Blake wrote "The Chimney Sweeper" of
  "Songs of Innocence" in 1789.
• This poem shows that the children have a very
  positive outlook on life.
• They make the best of their lives and do not fear
  death.
• This is quite the opposite in it's companion poem
  in "Songs of Experience" which was written in
  1794.
• In this poem, the child blames his parents for
  putting him in the position he was in. He is
  miserable in his situation and he also blames
  "God his Priest King".
• This point of view is different from that of its
  companion poem because the chimney sweeper has
  been influenced by society and has an
  "experienced" point of view.

12

• ????(The Divine Image)
• ????????????
• ??????????
• ???,??????????
• ????????
• ????????????
• ????,??????,
• ????????????
• ???,????,??????
• ??????????,
• ???????,
• ?,????????,
• ?????????
• ??,??????????
• ?????????,
• ??????????--
• ?????????????
• ??????????,
• ????????????

13

• "The Divine Image" of "Songs of Innocence"
  attributes the virtues of Mercy, Pity, Peace, and
  Love to the human form.
• It also gives God all of the glory for the
  creation of the human in his own form. This can
  be seen in the last two lines of the poem."
• The companion poem of "The Divine Image" in
  "Songs of Experience" had the same title, but it
  only appeared in one copy of "Songs of Innocence
  and Experience."
• Many believe that this is because Blake thought
  that a better companion poem for "The Divine
  Image" would be "The Human Abstract"

14

• "The Human Abstract" also attributes Pity and
  Mercy to the human form.
• However, it also implies that humans only have
  these characteristics through the poverty or
  unhappiness of others.
• It also says that humans have traits of Cruelty,
  Mystery, and Deceit.
• According to the poem, they also have Humility,
  but only because they have "holy fears."
• According to the poem, the characteristics of
  mankind are all there because of selfishness and
  self-absorption.
• This is quite a change from the point of view of
  "The Lamb," which praises the human form. The
  "experienced" author of "The Human Abstract" has
  seen how people really are.
• Through experience of hard times and
  wrong-doings, his perspective of everything has
  changed to something very far from his once
  innocent point of view.

15

• "Holy Thursday" in "Songs of Innocence" was
  written in 1789. The poem describes the English
  church's celebration of Jesus's ascension which
  takes place on Thursday 39 days after Easter. On
  this day, children from the charity schools of
  London were marched to a service at St. Paul's
  Cathedral. The beadles of the church were lower
  officers who were in charge of keeping order. In
  the last stanza of the poem, the children are
  singing in the balcony and the "aged men" are
  seated below them. The last line, "Then cherish
  pity, lest you drive an angel from your door." is
  an allusion to Hebrews 132, "Be not forgetful to
  entertain strangers for thereby some have
  entertained angels unawares." This poem gives the
  reader a portrayal of the children as angelic.

16

• "Holy Thursday" from "Songs of Experience" was
  written in 1794.
• This poem is also about the English church's
  ceremony on Holy Thursday, but the tone is a bit
  more depressing.
• The last line of the second stanza, "It is
  eternal winter there," is describing how they see
  the ceremony from their experienced point of
  view.
• This is very different from the image created in
  "Holy Thursday" of "Songs of Innocence."
• The last stanza of the poem adds to the analogy
  of the ceremony to winter by saying that when the
  sun shines and the rain falls, there can never be
  hunger or poverty.
• Obviously, the sun doesn't shine and the rain
  doesn't fall in winter, which means that,
  according to this poem, there is hunger and
  poverty among the children a much different
  image from the one seen in its companion poem.

17

• ?????(The Clod The Peddle)
• ?????????,??????????????????,?????,??????
• ?????????,??????????????????,?????????
• ?????????,?????????,?????????,?????,??????

18

• Robert Burns (25 January 1759 - 21 July 1796)
  (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favorite
  son, the Ploughman Poet, the Bard of Ayrshire and
  in Scotland as simply The Bard)
• He is widely regarded as the national poet of
  Scotland.
• He is the best-known of the poets who have
  written in the Scots language, although much of
  his writing is also in English and a 'light'
  Scots dialect.
• He also wrote in standard English, and in these
  pieces, his political or civil commentary is
  often at its most blunt.

19

• Robert Burns is regarded as a pioneer of the
  Romantic movement.
• After his death he became an important source of
  inspiration to the founders of both liberalism
  and socialism.
• A cultural icon in Scotland and among Scots who
  have relocated to other parts of the world,
  celebration of his life and work became almost a
  national charismatic cult during the 19th and
  20th centuries, and his influence has long been
  strong on Scottish literature.
• As well as making original compositions, Burns
  also collected folk songs from across Scotland,
  often revising or adapting them.

20

• His poem Auld Lang Syne is often sung at Hogmanay
  (????????), and Scots Wha Hae served for a long
  time as an unofficial national anthem of the
  country.
• Other poems and songs of Burns that remain
  well-known across the world today, include A Red,
  Red Rose, A Man's A Man for A' That, To a Louse,
  To a Mouse, The Battle of Sherramuir, and A Fond
  Kiss.
• Burns Night, effectively a second national day,
  is celebrated on 25 January with Burns suppers
  around the world, and is still more widely
  observed than the official national day, Saint
  Andrews Day, or the proposed North American
  celebration Tartan Day (????).

21

• The format of Burns suppers has not changed since
  Robert's death in 1796.
• The basic format starts with a general welcome
  and announcements followed with the Selkirk
  Grace.
• Just post the grace comes the piping and cutting
  of the Haggis, where Roberts famous Address To a
  Haggis is read, and the haggis (?????) is cut
  open.
• The event usually allows for people to start
  eating just after the haggis is presented.
• This is when the reading called the "immortal
  memory", an overview of Robert's life and work is
  given the event usually concludes with the
  singing of Auld Lang Syne.

22
A Red, Red Rose

• Burns had intended the work to be published as
  part of Thomson's selection.
• However, he wrote to a friend that Thomson and
  himself disagreed on the merits of that type of
  song. "What to me appears to be the simple and
  the wild, to him, and I suspect to you likewise,
  will be looked on as the ludicrous and the
  absurd."
• Instead, Burns gave the song to Scots singer
  Pietro Urbani who published it in his Scots
  Songs.
• In his book, Urbani claimed the words of The Red
  Red Rose were obligingly given to him by a
  celebrated Scots poet, who was so struck by them
  when sung by a country girl that he wrote them
  down and, not being pleased with the air, begged
  the author to set them to music in the style of a
  Scots tune, which he has done accordingly.
• In other correspondence, Burns referred to it as
  a "simple old Scots song which I had picked up in
  the country."

23
Auld Lang Syne

• It is often sung at the stroke of midnight on New
  Year's Day.
• The song is commonly accompanied by a traditional
  dance.
• The group who is singing forms a ring, holding
  hands for the first verse. For the second verse,
  arms are crossed and again linked. For the third
  verse, everyone moves in to the centre of the
  ring and then out again.
• The song's title may be translated into English
  literally as 'old long since', or more
  idiomatically 'long ago', or 'days gone by'.
• In his retelling of fairy tales in the Scots
  language, Matthew Fitt uses the phrase In the
  days of auld lang syne as the equivalent of
  Once upon a time.
• In Scots Syne is pronounced like the English word
  sign IPA sainnot zain as many people
  pronounce it.

24
To A Mouse

• Surely one of the finest poems written by Burns,
  containing some of the most famous and memorable
  lines ever written by a poet, yet, to this day
  not really understood by the mass of
  English-speaking poetry lovers, for no other
  reason than that the dialect causes it to be read
  as though in a foreign language.
• All readers of Burns know of the "Wee sleekit
  cow'rin tim'rous beastie" but not many understand
  the sadness and despair contained within the
  lines of this poem. 

25
For a That and a That

• Burns sent it to Thomson with the note, "I do not
  give you the foregoing song for your book, but
  merely by way of vive la bagatelle for the piece
  is not really poetry."
• The French use it to talk about a petty love
  affair when they disassociate the idea of love
  and sex.
• For A' That asserts the idea that basic human
  dignity was the heritage of any man and "liberty,
  equality, fraternity" should be the basis of
  economic as well as social intercourse.
• An outspoken champion Republican cause for social
  reform during The French Revolution, after Franco
  British relations deteriorated he curbed his
  radical sympathies and in the same year as this
  composition he joined the Dunfriesshire
  Volunteers.

26
Robert Burns

• He sent the piece to George Thomson in 1795
  because he found a compatriot spirit in the
  similar poem Rights of Man by Thomas Paine.
• He added some comments with regard to his intense
  dislike bloated rank and privilege, two or three
  pretty good prose thoughts, inverted into rhyme'
  the same month in a letter to another friend, he
  referred to the executions of Louis XVI and Marie
  Antoinette as the deserved fate of ... a
  perjured Blockhead and an unprincipled
  Prostitute.'

27
William Wordsworth

• William Wordsworth (April 7, 1770 April 23,
  1850) was a major English romantic poet who, with
  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, helped launch the
  Romantic Age in English literature with their
  1798 joint publication, Lyrical Ballads.
• Wordsworth's masterpiece is generally considered
  to be The Prelude, an autobiographical poem of
  his early years that was revised and expanded a
  number of times.
• It was never published during his lifetime, and
  was only given the title after his death.
• Up until this time it was generally known as the
  poem "to Coleridge".

28
William Wordsworth
29
Simon lee

• "Simon Lee" is a direct attempt to put into
  action many of the ideas expressed in his Preface
  to the Lyrical Ballads. 
• The poem itself, being based on an actual person,
  is a manifestation of Wordsworth's assertion that
  poetry is a "spontaneous overflow of powerful
  feelings" that "takes its origin from emotion
  recollected in tranquility" . 
• Wordsworth's fascination with the social
  implications of the old huntsman's situation led
  him to draw certain conclusions, and society is
  indicted here for its lack of compassion for and
  involvement with those people living on the
  fringes of society. 
• He states in the Preface to the Lyrical Ballads
  that "Simon Lee" is designed to "illustrate the
  manner in which our feelings and ideas are
  associated in a state of excitement . . . by
  placing the reader in the way of receiving from
  ordinary moral sensations another and more
  salutary impression" . 

30
William Wordsworth

• Wordsworth invites his readers to think about his
  experience--and his reaction to it--in the same
  way he has, and challenges them to find in it a
  higher, more relevant truth than pity. 
• Simon's meager existence is juxtaposed against
  the reader's the sharp contrasts illustrate
  Wordsworth's view of this poverty-stricken and
  forgotten old man as exemplifying the failure of
  human kindness toward the unfortunate and
  marginalized. 
• The poem moves the reader to feel pity, and then
  empathy, and finally to a state of social
  awareness. 
• Wordsworth's ultimate message, however, is that
  the reader should move beyond a mere
  contemplation of these emotions and realities and
  actually become involved.  The poem is a call to
  action.

31
A slumber did my spirit seal

• ???????????????????????????????????????
  ???,?????

32

• It consists of two stanzas rhyming abab.
• As soon as the reader recognizes that he is
  dealing with a poem certain expectations arise.
• He anticipates to be confronted with a special
  poetical language corresponding to the
  conventions of poetry.
• The reader is alert he is now looking eagerly
  for those poetical devices.
• Fortunately his expectations are already
  confirmed in the first line of the poem.
  Slumber is not used in everyday language and
  in the dictionary it is acknowledged as an old
  fashioned literary term.
• The syntax deviates from the standard as well
  the poet uses did seal instead of sealed
  which would be the grammatical correct past tense
  used nowadays.
• The reader feels at ease because his expectations
  have been confirmed. But the reading experience
  has only just begun

33
The Tables Turned

• ??,??! ??!??!????,?????? ????????????
  ??!??!????,?????? ?????????? ??,?????,
  ???????? ????????? ?? ??????????????
  ?!??????????? ??,?????, ??????!?????
  ???????????!

34

• ?! ????,?????! ?,???,????? ???,??????,
  ???????????? ??????????????, ????????? ??
  ??????????, ??????????? ????,????????
  ??????????, ??????????, ???????????
  ??????????? ???????? ?????????????,
  ????????? ??,??????? ?????????? ??,??????
  ????????????

35
I Traveled Among Unknown Men

• ???????? ----
• ???????? ????????? ?????????!?? ???????????
  ???,?????! ??,???????? ???????? ??????????
  ????,???? ???????? ??????,???? ????,???????
  ?????,????? ?????????? ??,?????????
  ????????????

36
Samuel Taylor Coleridge

• Samuel Taylor Coleridge (October 21, 1772 July
  25, 1834) was an English poet, critic, and
  philosopher, one of the founders of the Romantic
  Movement in England and one of the Lake Poets.
• He is probably best known for his poems The Rime
  of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan, as well as
  his major prose work Biographia Literaria.

37

• Coleridge is probably best known for his long
  poems, The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and
  Christabel.
• Christabel is known for its musical rhythm,
  language, and its Gothic tale.
• Kubla Khan, or, A Vision in a Dream, A Fragment,
  although shorter, is also widely known and loved.
  
• It has strange, dreamy imagery and can be read on
  many levels.
• Both Kubla Khan and Christabel have an additional
  "romantic" aura because they were never finished.
  
• Stopford Brooke characterised both poems as
  having no rival due to their "exquisite metrical
  movement" and "imaginative phrasing." It is one
  of history's tragedies that Coleridge was
  interrupted while writing Kubla Khan by a visitor
  and could not recall any more of the poem
  afterwards.

38

• However, it is now acknowledged that Coleridge
  had composed previous drafts of Kubla Khan,
  perhaps a reflection of his desire to flag the
  'power' of imagination.
• Coleridge's shorter, meditative "conversation
  poems," however, proved to be the most
  influential of his work. These include both quiet
  poems like This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison and
  Frost at Midnight and also strongly emotional
  poems like Dejection and The Pains of Sleep.
• Wordsworth immediately adopted the model of these
  poems, and used it to compose several of his
  major poems.
• Via Wordsworth, the conversation poem became a
  standard vehicle for English poetic expression,
  and perhaps the most common approach among modern
  poets.
• Coleridge's poetry so impressed the parents of
  British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor
  (1875-1912) that they named him after the poet.

39
George Gordon Byron

• George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron (22 January
  1788 19 April 1824) was an Anglo-Scottish poet
  and a leading figure in Romanticism. Among Lord
  Byron's best-known works are the narrative poems
  Childe Harold's Pilgrimage and Don Juan.
• The latter remained incomplete on his death.
• He was regarded as one of the greatest European
  poets and remains widely read.

40
Written after swimming from sestos to abydos

• The Hellespont is a narrow stretch of sea in the
  Strait of Dardanelles, separating western FROM
  eastern Turkey. Legend has it that the beautiful
  maiden Hero was on one side of the strait and her
  lover, Leander on the other.
• Leander swam across to her one dark and stormy
  night and was drowned.
• Lord Byron prided himself on his physical
  fitness. He walked with a limp and had been
  spoken of slightingly by a girl that he fancied
  in his youth as "that limping lad".
• Ever after he was out to prove himself as the
  equal of any man in any arena of physical
  competition, but particularly sexual.
• Aside FROM this, he was an excellent boxer and
  fencer, played cricket for his school and unlike
  most Englishmen of his date, was a very strong
  swimmer.
• His romantic notion of swimming the Hellespont
  like Leander resulted in a fever- the ague that
  he refers to in the last line.

41

• Byron's first drama, Manfred, details the
  author's characterization of the Romantic hero, a
  figure of superior abilities and intense passions
  who rejects human contact as well as the aid and
  comfort offered by various religious
  representatives.
• Consumed by his own sense of guilt for an
  unspecified transgression involving Astarte, the
  only human he ever loved, Manfred finally seeks
  peace through his own death.

42

• Manfred represents Byron's articulation of the
  Romantic hero, a figure so far superior to other
  humans that he need not be bound by the
  constraints of human society. Similarly, he
  submits to no spiritual authority, rejecting
  pantheism, Zoroastrianism, and Christianity.
• Manfred answers only to himself, and because of
  this he is the instrument of his own destruction,
  fashioning a punishment for his unexplained guilt
  that far exceeds any possible retribution imposed
  by human or religious authorities.

43

• Lord Byron's fame rests not only on his writings
  but also on his life, which featured extravagant
  living, numerous love affairs, debts, separation,
  and allegations of incest and sodomy.
• He was famously described by Lady Caroline Lamb
  as "mad, bad, and dangerous to know."
• Byron served as a regional leader of Italy's
  revolutionary organization the Carbonari in its
  struggle against Austria, and later travelled to
  fight against the Turks in the Greek War of
  Independence, for which the Greeks consider him a
  national hero. He died from a febrile illness in
  Messolonghi.
• His daughter Ada Lovelace, notable in her own
  right, collaborated with Charles Babbage on the
  analytical engine, a predecessor to modern
  computers.

44
Percy Bysshe Shelley

• Percy Bysshe Shelley (August 4, 1792 July 8,
  1822) was one of the major English Romantic poets
  and is widely considered to be among the finest
  lyric poets of the English language.
• He is perhaps most famous for such anthology
  pieces as Ozymandias, Ode to the West Wind, To a
  Skylark, and The Masque of Anarchy.

45

• However, his major works were long visionary
  poems including Alastor, Adonais, The Revolt of
  Islam, Prometheus Unbound and the unfinished The
  Triumph of Life.
• Shelley's unconventional life and uncompromising
  idealism, combined with his strong skeptical
  voice, made him a notorious and much denigrated
  figure during his life.
• He became the idol of the next two or three
  generations of poets, including the major
  Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite poets Robert
  Browning, Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Dante Gabriel
  Rossetti, Algernon Charles Swinburne, as well as
  William Butler Yeats and poets in other languages
  such as Jibanananda Das and Subramanya Bharathy).
  

46

• He was also admired by Karl Marx, Henry Stephens
  Salt, and Bertrand Russell.
• Famous for his association with his equally
  short-lived contemporaries John Keats and Lord
  Byron, he was married to novelist Mary Shelley.
• In "Ode to the West Wind," Percy Bysshe Shelley
  tries to gain transcendence, for he shows that
  his thoughts, like the "winged seeds" (7) are
  trapped. 
• The West Wind acts as a driving force for change
  and rejuvenation in the human and natural world. 
  
• Shelley views winter not just as last phase of
  vegetation but as the last phase of life in the
  individual, the imagination, civilization and
  religion. 

47
Ode to the West Wind

• Being set in Autumn, Shelley observes the
  changing of the weather and its effects on the
  internal and external environment. 
• By examining this poem, the reader will see that
  Shelley can only reach his sublime by having the
  wind carry his "dead thoughts" (63) which through
  an apocalyptic destruction, will lead to a
  rejuvenation of the imagination, the individual
  and the natural world.

48
John Keats

• John Keats (31 October 1795 23 February 1821)
  was one of the principal poets of the English
  Romantic movement.
• During his short life, his work received constant
  critical attacks from the periodicals of the day,
  but his posthumous influence on poets such as
  Alfred Tennyson has been immense.
• Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery
  characterize Keats's poetry, including a series
  of odes that were his masterpieces and which
  remain among the most popular poems in English
  literature.

49

• Keats's letters, which expound on his aethetic
  theory of "negative capability", are among the
  most celebrated by any writer.

50
On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

• ?????????????,?????????????????????????,??????
  ??????????????????????????????????????????????
  ?????,?????????????????????????????????????????
  ?????????????,???????????--??????????,???????-
  -?????????

51

• Sleep and Poetry (1816) is a poem by John Keats.
  It was started late one evening while staying the
  night at Leigh Hunt's cottage.
• It is often cited as a clear example of Keats's
  bower-centric poetry, yet it contains lines that
  make such a simplistic reading problematic.
• Furthermore, Keats defends his early
  'bower-centric' subject matter, which hearkens
  back to the classical poetic tradition of Homer
  and Virgil.
• Keats mounts an attack against Alexander Pope and
  many of his own fellow Romantic poets by
  downplaying their poetic departures into the
  imaginary.
• Although written in simplistic rhyming couplets,
  the gradual turn towards inwardness serves as an
  important anticipation for Keats's later poetry.

52

• Ode to a Nightingale was written in May, 1819, in
  the garden of the Spaniards Inn, Hampstead.
• It was first published in 'Annals of the Fine
  Arts' in July of the same year. Referred to by
  critics of the time as "the longest and most
  personal of the odes," the poem describes Keats'
  journey into the state of Negative Capability.
• The poem explores the themes of nature,
  transience and mortality.
• Keats imagines the loss of the physical world,
  and sees himself dead--he uses an abrupt, almost
  brutal word for it--as a "sod" over which the
  nightingale sings.

53

• The contrast between the immortal nightingale and
  mortal man, sitting in his garden, is made all
  the more acute by an effort of the imagination.
• The presence of weather is noticeable in the
  poem, as spring came early in 1819, which brought
  nightingales all over the heath.
• According to Keats' friend, Charles Armitage
  Brown, a nightingale had built its nest hear his
  home in the spring of 1819.
• Keats felt a "tranquil and continual joy in her
  song and one morning he took his chair from the
  breakfast table to the grass plot under a plum
  tree, where he sat for two of three hours."

54

• "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is first published in
  January 1820.
• Its inspiration is considered to be a visit by
  Keats to the exhibition of Greek artifacts
  accompanying the display of the "Elgin Marbles"
  at the British Museum.
• The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of
  "Negative Capability", as the reader does not
  know who the figures are on the urn, what they
  are doing, or where they are going.
• Instead, the speaker revels in this mystery, as
  he does in the final couplet, which does not make
  immediate, ascertainable sense but continues to
  have poetic significance nonetheless.
• The ode ultimately deals with the complexity of
  art's relationship with real life.

55
Reference

• http//blog.roodo.com/poe/archives/3910033.html
• http//hk.geocities.com/ice_pears/william_blake.ht
  m
• http//asms.k12.ar.us/classes/humanities/britlit/9
  7-98/blake/POEMS.htm
• http//www.amdgchinese.org/ss/s02.php
• http//asms.k12.ar.us/classes/humanities/britlit/9
  7-98/blake/POEMS.htm
• http//dfpoon.wordpress.com/2005/04/21

56
Reference

• http//www.everything2.com/index.pl?node_id110388
  9
• http//www.umd.umich.edu/casl/hum/eng/jonsmith/sam
  ple1.html
• http//www.bilinguist.com/data/hanying/messages/33
  952.html
• http//zhidao.baidu.com/question/11251647.html?fr
  qrl3

57
Reference

• http//www.123helpme.com/assets/17455.html
• http//lignifyart.blogspot.com/2007/03/on-first-lo
  oking-into-chapmans-homer.html