Landscape with the Fall of Icarus

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats (1819)

John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is one of the most famous ekphrastic poems of a literary figure whom William Carlos Williams himself regarded as an important source of inspiration. Just like Williams’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” Keats’s poem addresses the themes of art and the human experience, though in very different ways. Reading these two poems together invites readers to consider the different ways art can intersect with reality and the human experience, and revisit “timeless” classical themes.

“Musée des Beaux Arts” by W. H. Auden (1938)

This poem, like Williams’s “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus,” explores the theme of human indifference to suffering through the same painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder. The poem explores the juxtaposition of everyday life with the tragic fall of Icarus in the same Modernist literary context.

“To a Skylark” by Percy Bysshe Shelley (1820)

Percy Bysshe Shelley’s poem celebrates the skylark’s ethereal beauty and the power of its song, drawing a contrast with the troubles of human existence. Much like Williams’s poem, “To a Skylark” explores the tension between the sublime and the everyday while also touching on the idea of human aspiration and the limitations of the material world. The skylark’s song becomes a symbol of unattainable transcendence, echoing the myth of Icarus in its pursuit of the unreachable.