Thinking activity : John Keats

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As we know that there is one thing we afraid most and that is DEATH. We all know birth and death is a cycle of life and nature and we have to follow this. No one can escape from this, can not deny to death. Though  people used to hate it. But in literature there are two sides of death. when we see from writers views or perspectives we find death as something different. For writers death is something which gives peace and calm. As John Keats remarks…

            'Death is life's high meed'

Here is a  task to find how writers use the element of death in their poetry. Regarded by Prof. Hinaba zala. 

The main figures of the second generation of Romantic poet, JOHN KEATS was a famous Romantic writer. He lives a very short life but did an amazing work in his lifetime. He is famous for his Odes. One of his odes he talk about death in….

    

               Ode to a nightingale 

The poem is Keats' personal poem. It's reflects his journey into the state of  negative capability. He was inspired by a bird's song and the amazing thing is that he composed the poem in one day…. 

As we know Nightingale is a bird who sing beautifully and sweetly. Through its Keats described the death. The bird describes the experiences of a type of death but didn't die in the poem. In the poem Keats wants to convey that…

                    Death is an indistinguishable part of life

We can not separate this from our life. The poem ends with an acceptance that pleasure cannot last and death is a part of our life. So John Keats has a positive view on death. According to him….

  Land and sea, weakness and decline are great separators, but death is the great divorcer for ever

So, he sees the death as something which is stressless and  give pleasure.

● Death as a normal thing...

Here I'm taking one poem of Henry Scott Holland. The poem is about death. But here he takes death as a normal and not a big deal or thing. On the other hand people are mostly afraid of death and always try to stop the cycle of nature. But always fail to stop the death. 

                            ☆   Death Is nothing at all   ☆

Death is nothing at all.

It does not count.

I have only slipped away into the next room.

Nothing has happened.

Everything remains exactly as it was.

I am I, and you are you,

and the old life that we lived so fondly together is untouched, unchanged.

Whatever we were to each other, that we are still ...(click here to read the poem)

In this poem Henry Scott Holland describes the death as a normal thing in our life. People always refused to talk about death because the one reason is….

No Body knows what happens after one's death 

And other reason is that if someone dies we totally lost them. After his or her death we can't see them, can't talk with them. That's why we hate the death. But the poet in this poem trying to say death is nothing at all. After somebody's death when time passed we will be normal. So don't worry about death. 

What is this death but a negligible accident?

As he says in his poem death is nothing more than a shallow thing. People make it terrible, horrible and always pray to God to save their lives but here poet believes that death is nothing….

All is well.

Nothing is hurt; nothing is lost.

One brief moment and all will be as it was before.

How we shall laugh at the trouble of parting when we meet again!

For writers death is a normal thing. They are also afraid of it but they accept the reality and want to aware the people to accept the truth of life. Death seems to them as a part of our life and acceptance is a prime thing….

● Death as a wonderful thing….

Percy Bysshe Shelley has written a poem Queen Mab. And in the very beginning of the stanza we can find he described death as a wonderful thing. He described death as a beautiful thing. 

      

How wonderful is Death, Death, and his brother Sleep! One, pale as yonder waning moon With lips of lurid blue; The other, rosy as the morn When throned on ocean’s wave It blushes o’er the world; Yet both so passing wonderful!

Thus, in the literature we can find death as a normal thing, as a wonderful thing, as a thing which gives calm,  happiness and peace. So there is a vast difference between ordinary people and literary people. Death is a beautiful creation of nature. And will be not painful if we will excepting this...