Ode to a Nightingale VS. Ode to a Grecian UrnI was asked to write an essay to discuss Keats’ lines “Heard melodies are sweet, but those...

Just a little correction, it is Ode
On a Greacian Urn which many people mistake for Ode To A
Grecian Urn.

In my opinion the "unheard melodies" from the
grecian urn and the heard melody of nightingale serve the same purpose,ie, to take him
away from this world of chaos and misery. The only difference being that Keats hears the
unheard melody of pipers as an audience whereas he becomes one with the nightingale as
he listens to its song, so much so that he chants

"I can
not see what flowers are at my feet

Nor what soft incense
hangs upon the boughs"

and at the end comes out of the
trance saying;

"Was that a vision or a waking
dream?

Fled is that music--Do i wake or
sleep?"

whereas Ode on a Grecian Urn concludes
with

Beauty is truth--truth beauty, that is
all

Ye know on earth and all ye need to
know.

On the other hand the unheard melodies
takes the poet to the past where he contemplates on breed of marble men, mad persuit,
struggle to escape, pipes and timbrels and wild ecstasy---to the things which are
already dead; eternalised on the Urn whereas the voice of nightingale makes the narrator
say

"Thou wast not born for death. Immortal
bird"

The gist-both the songs are the viewless wings which
take the poet to the artistic world of nature.