Ode on a Grecian Urn

By John Keats End-Rhyming Words Are Highlighted Stanza 1 Thou still unravishd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fringd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Stanza 2 Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endeard, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goalyet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! Stanza 3 Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, [un WEER e ED] For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoyd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Stanza 4 Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Leadst thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? And, little town, thy streets for evermore Will silent be; and not a soul to tell Why thou art desolate, can eer return. Stanza 5 O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou sayst, Beauty is truth, truth beauty,that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Summary and Annotations

Stanza 1 .......Keats calls the urn an unravishd bride of quietness because it has existed for centuries without undergoing any changes (it is unravished) as it sits quietly on a shelf or table. He also calls it a fosterchild of silence and time because it is has been adopted by silence and time, parents who have conferred on the urn eternal stillness. In addition, Keats refers to the urn as a sylvan historian because it records a pastoral scene from long ago. (Sylvan refers to anything pertaining to woods or forests.) This scene tells a story (legend) in pictures framed with leaves (leaf-fringd)a story that the urn tells more charmingly with its images than Keats does with his pen. Keats speculates that the scene is set either in Tempe or Arcady. Tempe is a valley in Thessaly, Greecebetween Mount Olympus and Mount Ossathat is favored by Apollo, the god of poetry and music. Arcady is Arcadia, a picturesque region in the Peloponnesus (a peninsula making up the southern part of Greece) where inhabitants live in carefree simplicity. Keats wonders whether the images he sees represent humans or gods. And, he asks, who are the reluctant (loth) maidens and what is the activity taking place? Stanza 2 .......Using paradox and oxymoron to open Stanza 2, Keats praises the silent music coming from the pipes and timbrels as far more pleasing than the audible music of real life, for the music from the urn is for the

spirit. Keats then notes that the young man playing the pipe beneath trees must always remain an etched figure on the urn. He is fixed in time like the leaves on the tree. They will remain ever green and never die. Keats also says the bold young lover (who may be the piper or another person) can never embrace the maiden next to him even though he is so close to her. However, Keats says, the young man should not grieve, for his lady love will remain beautiful forever, and their lovethough unfulfilledwill continue through all eternity. Stanza 3 .......Keats addresses the trees, calling them happy, happy boughs because they will never shed their leaves, and then addresses the young piper, calling him happy melodist because his songs will continue forever. In addition, the young man's love for the maiden will remain forever warm and still to be enjoyd / For ever panting, and for ever young. . . . In contrast, Keats says, the love between a man and a woman in the real world is imperfect, bringing pain and sorrow and desire that cannot be fully quenched. The lover comes away with a burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Stanza 4 .......Keats inquires about the images of people approaching an altar to sacrifice a "lowing" (mooing) cow, one that has never borne a calf, on a green altar. Do these simple folk come from a little town on a river, a seashore, or a mountain topped by a peaceful fortress. Wherever the town is, it will be forever empty, for all of its inhabitants are here participating in the festivities depicted on the urn. Like the other figures on the urn, townspeople are frozen in time; they cannot escape the urn and return to their homes. Stanza 5 .......Keats begins by addressing the urn as an attic shape. Attic refers to Attica, a region of east-central ancient Greece in which Athens was the chief city. Shape, of course, refers to the urn. Thus, attic shape is an urn that was crafted in ancient Attica. The urn is a beautiful one, poet says, adorned with brede (braiding, embroidery) depicting marble men and women enacting a scene in the tangle of forest tree branches and weeds. As people look upon the scene, they ponder itas they would ponder eternitytrying so hard to grasp its meaning that they exhaust themselves of thought. Keats calls the scene a cold pastoral!in part because it is made of cold, unchanging marble and in part, perhaps, because it frustrates him with its unfathomable mysteries, as does eternity. (At this time in his life, Keats was suffering from tuberculosis, a disease that had killed his brother, and was no doubt much occupied with thoughts of eternity. He was also passionately in love with a young woman, Fanny Brawne, but was unable to act decisively on his feelingseven though she reciprocated his lovebecause he believed his lower social status and his dubious financial situation stood in the way. Consequently, he was like the cold marble of the urnfixed and immovable.) Keats says that when death claims him and all those of his generation, the urn will remain. And it will say to the next generation what it has said to Keats: Beauty is truth, truth beauty. In other words, do not try to look beyond the beauty of the urn and its images, which are representations of the eternal, for no one can see into eternity. The beauty itself is enough for a human; that is the only truth that a human can fully grasp. The poem ends with an endorsement of these words, saying they make up the only axiom that any human being really needs to know. The main figures of speech in the poem are apostrophe and metaphor in the form of personification. An apostrophe is a figure of speech in which an author speaks to a person or thing absent or present. A metaphor is a figure of speech that compares two unlike things without using the word like,as, or than. Personification is a type of metaphor that compares an object with a human being. In effect, it treats an object as a personhence, the term personification. Apostrophe and metaphor/personification occur simultaneously in the opening lines of the poem when Keats addresses the urn as "Thou," "bride," "fosterchild," and "historian" (apostrophe). In speaking to the urn this way, he implies that it is a human (metaphor/personification). Keats also addresses the trees as persons in Stanza 3 and continues to

address the urn as a person in Stanza 5. Other notable figures of speech in the poem include the following: Assonance bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of silence and slow time Alliteration Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, / Sylvan historian, who canst thus express Anaphora What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy? Paradox What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? (The images move even though they are fixed in marble) Oxymoron those [melodies] unheard peaceful citadel (citadel: fortress occupied by soldiers)

Situation and Setting

.......In England, Keats examines a marble urn crafted in ancient Greece. (Whether such an urn was real or imagined is uncertain. However, many artifacts from ancient Greece, ones which could have inspired Keats, were on display in the British Museum at the time that Keats wrote the poem.) Pictured on the urn, a type of vase, are pastoral scenes in Greece. In one scene, males are chasing females in some sort of revelry or celebration. There are musicians playing pipes (wind instruments such as flutes) and timbrels (ancient tambourines). Keats wonders whether the images represent both gods and humans. He also wonders what has occasioned their merrymaking. A second scene depicts people leading a heifer to a sacrificial altar. Keats writes his ode about what he sees, addressing or commenting on the urn and its images as if they were real beings with whom he can speak.
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