Keats and the Ode to Melancholy

Ode on Melancholy by John Keats

No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist

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Jack Miller What wisdom Keats had. The Ode tells us not only of love and nature, but of being. It applies to all the archetypes and enduring forms we seek and want so desperately to hold.There is no permanence, no more than this young poet had in his brief life. "Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose,
Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave" is the only way to live beyond nihilism and cynicism. Best of all is to burst joy's grape. It will not last, nor will the golden age of Pericles, nor even humanity itself. The Ideal Forms of Plato, those on which we mistakenly base our lives, exist only in the imagination.

--Jameson