Summary:

Keats describes his reaction to a Grecian urn painted with images of maidens, pipers and other Greeks. While the melody of modern day pipes may be sweet, Keats finds the painted pipes sweeter. They are not mere sensual pleasure, but guide one to a higher sense of ideal beauty. The other images have a similar effect, as they are frozen forever at the moment of highest perfection.

One part of the urn shows a youth about to kiss a maid. Keats envies the lover, for though he will never actually kiss his love, she will ever remain fair and they will forever be in love. The painted trees will also forever be perfect, never losing their leaves. When Keats' world passes away, this beautiful object will still remain and tell man that "Beauty is truth, truth beauty."

View full annotation

Summary:

The narrator distinguishes between madness and sanity: the beliefs of the majority constitute sanity, whereas those who dissent are considered insane.

View full annotation

Summary:

Keats urges his reader not to respond to melancholy by committing suicide. He says to avoid poisons like Wolf's-bane, nightshade, and yew berries. Instead, when most depressed, "glut thy sorrow" on the beauty of a rose or the rainbow of salt and sea. Likewise, if your mistress is angry with you, look into her eyes and feast on their ephemeral beauty.

Contrast is the key to pleasure. Melancholy is not the moment for death, but an opportunity for a fine experience. It is the fine balance between pain and pleasure that is ideal. The final stanza rephrases this idea. Beauty is always ephemeral; joy is always about to leave, but these are man's highest moments.

View full annotation

Summary:

From centuries beyond the grave, the narrator describes the peaceful process of her passing, in which Death is personified and escorts her in his carriage. During the leisurely ride, she passes many ordinary sights: a school house, fields--but finally realizes that the ride will last for all eternity.

View full annotation

Summary:

A man walks through the countryside after a night of rain. The creatures around him are lively and refreshed. At first, he shares their joy, but his mood soon turns as he reflects that care and pain are the inevitable balance to the care-free life he has lead so far: "We poets in our youth begin in gladness; But thereof come in the end despondency and madness."

He comes upon an old man staring into a muddy pond. The man seems weighed down with care; he is so still he seems dead. He greets the man and asks what he is doing. The old man is a leech-gatherer, leeches being needed by eighteenth-century doctors. He wanders the moors, sleeping outside, and thus makes a steady living. The wanderer resolves not to give in to misery, but to think instead of the courage and firm mind of the leech gatherer.

View full annotation

Summary:

Wordsworth describes his respect for an elderly female friend. Her wrinkles, grey hair, white cheeks, and bent head bring to mind a snowdrop. Like her, the delicate flower that blossoms on snow-covered mountains is a child of winter that prompts thoughts of gentle demise. Aging and death are compared to the moon growing brighter as night grows darker. Old age refines people into something more pure and exquisite.

View full annotation

Summary:

Macbeth, Thane of Glamis, is told by a trio of witches that he will soon be promoted to Thane of Cawdor, and later will be King of Scotland. When the first of their prophesies comes true, he tells his wife, who is filled with ambition and determines to ensure that the second is realized as well. She persuades her husband to murder King Duncan, and so Macbeth becomes King.

The rest of the play traces the couple's downfall as a result not only of the murder and hence the political injustice of Macbeth's reign, which leads to war in Scotland, but also because of the terrible psychological effects of guilt. Neither of them sleeps soundly again; Macbeth sees ghosts and appears to go mad; Lady Macbeth sleepwalks, endlessly washing her hands of the metaphysical blood that stains her, and eventually commits suicide. Macbeth dies when Macduff, rightful heir to the throne, besieges his castle and beheads him in battle.

View full annotation

Summary:

Shakespeare considers the destructive power of time: it can ruin "lofty towers" and destroy land and bodies of water. He realizes that time will eventually tear him from his beloved, and mourns her death to come.

View full annotation

Summary:

Picturesque autumn and evening imagery is an analogy for the changes that occur during aging. These changes are "perceiv[ed]" by one's beloved, whose love grows stronger in the face of the knowledge that death will come "ere long."

View full annotation

Summary:

Shakespeare compares the directionality and rhythmic quality of waves to the natural life cycle: "nativity . . . / crawls to maturity", and to the relentless nature of time. Although death is eventually inevitable, the poet's tone is not one of fear or frustration, but of calm acceptance and the hope that his "verse shall stand."

View full annotation