Sunday, February 20, 2011

Ah, happy, happy ode

In the third stanza, Keats uses the word happy six times in five lines. Throughout the poem Keats has shown that his vocabulary is extensive, so the fact that he chose to say happy six times seemed peculiar to me. It seems like he is trying to convince himself into believing that being frozen in time, and staying forever young is better then fading, and eventually dying. If he actually did believe this then there would be no need to repeat the word happy, he could easily illustrate it in other terms. Maybe, he's confused and cannot really seem to choose which is better, quietness or sound, frozen for eternity or alive if only for a moment.

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