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Compiled by Michael J. Cummings...©
2005
Type
of Work
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"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is
a romantic ode, a dignified but highly lyrical (emotional) poem in which
the author speaks to a person or thing absent or present. In this famous
ode, Keats addresses the urn and the images on it. The romantic ode was
at the pinnacle of its popularity in the 19th Century. It was the result
of an author’s deep meditation on the person or object. The romantic ode
evolved from the ancient Greek ode, written in a serious tone to celebrate
an event or to praise an individual. The Greek ode was intended to be sung
by a chorus or by one person to the accompaniment of musical instruments.
The odes of the Greek poet Pindar (circa 518-438 B.C.) frequently extolled
athletes who participated in athletic games at Olympus, Delphi, the Isthmus
of Corinth, and Nemea. Bacchylides, a contemporary of Pindar, also wrote
odes praising athletes. The Roman poets Horace (65-8 B.C.) and Catullus
(84-54 B.C.) wrote odes based on the Greek model, but their odes were not
intended to be sung. In the 19th Century, English romantic poets wrote
odes that retained the serious tone of the Greek ode. However, like the
Roman poets, they did not write odes to be sung. Unlike the Roman poets,
though, the authors of 19th Century romantic odes generally were more emotional
in their writing. The author of a typical romantic ode focused on a scene,
pondered its meaning, and presented a highly personal reaction to it that
included a special insight at the end of the poem (like the closing lines
of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”).
Writing
and Publication Dates
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was
written in the spring of 1819 and published later that year in Annals
of the Fine Arts, which focused on architecture, sculpture, and painting
but sometimes published poems and essays with themes related to the arts.
Structure
and Meter
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" consists
of five stanzas that present a scene, describe and comment on what it shows,
and offer a general truth that the scene teaches a person analyzing the
scene. Each stanza has ten lines written in iambic pentameter, a pattern
of rhythm (meter) that assigns ten syllables to each line. The first syllable
is unaccented, the second accented, the third unaccented, the fourth accented,
and so on. Note, for example, the accent pattern of the first two lines
of the poem. The unaccented syllables are in lower-cased blue letters,
and the accented syllables are in upper-cased red letters.
thou
STILL un
RAV ished
BRIDE of
QUI et
NESS,
thou
FOS ter
- CHILD of
SI lence
AND slow
TIME
Notice that each line has
ten syllables, five unaccented ones in blue and five accented ones in red.
Thus, these lines--like the other lines in the poem--are in iambic pentameter.
Iambic refers to a pair of syllables, one unaccented and the other
accented. Such a pair is called an iamb. "Thou STILL" is an iamb;
so are "et NESS" and "slow TIME." However, "BRIDE of" and "FOS ter" are
not iambs because they consist of an accented syllable followed by an unaccented
syllable. Pentameter--the first syllable of which is derived from the Greek
word for five--refers to lines that have five iambs (which, as demonstrated,
each have two syllables). "Ode on a Grecian Urn," then, is in iambic pentameter
because every line has five iambs, each iamb consisting of an unaccented
syllable followed by an accented one. The purpose of this stress pattern
is to give the poem rhythm that pleases the ear.
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.
Text,
Summary, and Annotations
End-Rhyming Words Are Highlighted
| Ode on a Grecian Urn
Stanza 1
THOU still unravish’d 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-fring’d 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 endear’d,
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
goal—yet, 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 enjoy’d,
For ever
panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion
far above,
That leaves a heart
high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning
forehead, and a parching tongue.
Stanza 4
Who are these coming to the
sacrifice?
To what green altar,
O mysterious priest,
Lead’st 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 e’er 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 say’st,
“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 “unravish’d
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 “foster-child 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-fring’d”)–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,
Greece–between Mount Olympus and Mount Ossa–that 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
love–though unfulfilled–will 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 enjoy’d / 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 it–as they would ponder eternity–trying 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 feelings–even though
she reciprocated his love–because he believed his lower social status and
his dubious financial situation stood in the way. Consequently, he was
like the cold marble of the urn–fixed 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. |
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...
Figures of Speech
.
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 person--hence, the term personification. Apostrophe and
metaphor/personification occur simultaneously in the opening lines of the
poem when Keats addresses the urn as "Thou," "bride," "foster-child,"
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)
Biography
of Keats
.
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Bartleby
Infoplease
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