Keats and Yates - Poetry Comparison

This paper compares and contrasts Keats' "Ode to a Grecian Urn" with Yates "Sailing to Byzantium" .

When you go to bed you see that it is dark outside, but when you wake you see light. The light and dark of the day is very dissent, but they are very closely related. Dark and light are the fares things from each other, while you can't have light without dark meeting. In the "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "Sailing to Byzantium" we see these differences.

The difference in the "Ode on Grecian Urn" and " Sailing to Byzantium" are very distinctive especially in the themes of art verses nature in the battle between immortality. "Sailing to Byzantium" has themes such as art verses nature while "Ode on a Grecian Urn" relies mainly on the battle of immortality in life. This can also be said about "Sailing to Byzantium." We will start with "Sailing to Byzantium to show the strive for immortality. This theme of immortality as I go thoughtout this poem: "That is no country for old men.

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The young in one other arms, bids in the tree. Those dying generations of their song." (1,2,3) Imortality hit you in the face start off these lines. It talks about old becoming young and birds and trees. This makes you think of spring and vegetation and animals and life.

Yates uses vivified examples such as "An Aged Man is but a patty thing, a tattered coat upon a stick." (9,10) Yates is describing a scarecrow or what you might call death.

He also talks about a maniacal bird in lines thirty and thirty-one. This is something that isn't dying and will go on forever. These two images life and death help insure the complexity of these poems. The images of life and death is also repesented in Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn." "What leap-fringd Latin haults about they shap of deities or mortials or both." (5,6) As you can see through reading these lines life and death are big aspects in this poem. One the other side this poem is very different from Sailing to Byzantium." In "Ode on a Grecian Urn" there is just one aspect that is really representatives here. This aspect of death is talked about so vivialy in this poem. Keats talks about death all through this poem. "Through winning Near the Goal-yet do not greive, she can not save, through threw has not the bliss."(18,19) When you die you fade away. This tone is all through this poem. Death is a huge aspect and a way of life.

The vivid way that keats talks about death "With Forest Branches and the trodian leaves." (43) Death can get you any where death can streach out and grab you like a weed or branch. As you can see the difference between Keats and Yates writing's. while Yates is a victorian writer and Keats is a romantic writer. Keats in his "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is talking about death, while "Sailing to Byzantim" by Yates is a poem that talks about both life and death. The distengished between life and death makes the differences in these two while Keats and Yates poems are different they are also alike in the way they talk abour death.