Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats Summary and Analysis
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John Keats
,
Notes & Analysis
,
Poetry
Ode on a
Grecian Urn
In the first
stanza, the speaker stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He
is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the “still
unravish’d bride of quietness,” the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” He
also describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about
the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from
where they come. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men
pursuing a group of women and wonders what their story could be: “What mad
pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild
ecstasy?”
In the
second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a
young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The
speaker says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are sweeter than mortal
melodies because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though
he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve,
because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he looks at the trees
surrounding the lovers and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves.
He is happy for the piper because his songs will be “for ever new,” and happy
that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love,
which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes, leaving
behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”
In the
fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a
group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are
going (“To what green altar, O mysterious priest...”) and from where they have
come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it
that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it,
frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final stanza, the speaker again
addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of
thought.” He thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain,
telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth
beauty.” The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the
only thing it needs to know.
Title:
On a Grecian
Urn means to or about a Greek urn. The urn is addressed (= talked to). Talking
to a thing is a thing that poets do in odes. (You will see that In this ode,
the poet also addresses the things he sees on the urn.)
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Line 1:
THOU still unravish’d bride of quietness,
The urn is
the virgin (“unravished” means she has not been touched) bride of quietness.
A bride is a woman who gets married. In this case the vase is the bride
of quiet.
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Line 2:
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
The urn is
also the foster-child (= not a biological child but one that is taken
care of by someone else than its parent) of Silence and Time. Usually time is
fast, but here not, because we are talking about an urn which is not alive,
so time passes slowly for it.
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Line 3
& 4: Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
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A flowery
tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
Sylvan (or
sylvian) means of the woods. The word has a pleasant, peaceful connotation.
So sylvan historian means the maker of the urn who presents a pleasant scene
in the woods. Maybe one such as this:
Nymphs and
Satyrs by Peter Paul Rubens
Canst is
an old-fashioned form of can.
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Line 5:
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
What
legend (= old story) framed with leaves can be found around your shape (= the
urn).
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5
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Line
6: Of deities or mortals, or of both,
Deities
are gods, and mortals are humans (mortal comes from the French mort = dead.)
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Line 7: In
Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
Tempe is a
valley in Greece. A dale is also a valley. Arcady is a region in Greece that
is associated with a peaceful and simple country life.
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Line
8: What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
A maiden
is an old word for girl. Loth means not willing (the girls don’t want to).
What don’t the girls want? Well, probably to be kissed or more than that.
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Line 9:
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
Mad
pursuit may refer to a classic scene where fauns who are always horny pursue
(pursuit is the noun, and pursue means chase) the girls or nymphs. The
nymphs/girls then struggle (fight) to escape the men’s grabbing arms.
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Line 10:
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Pipes are
flutes. A timbrel is an ancient tambourine.
The music
is played and the people or gods in the picture are going wild. They’re
ecstatic. They’re probably dancing wildly. You get the idea.
Stanza 2:
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Line 11:
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
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Line 12:
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
This
stanza speaks of things that are not in the scene on the urn. When we look at
the urn, we might hear music in our imagination, but that music isn’t really
there. The speaker of the poem draws our attention to this, and he says
the music that you can’t actually hear, that imaginary music, is
actually better than real music. Quite an interesting statement to make. Do
you agree with the poet?
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Line 13:
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
The pipes
(= flutes) in the picture on the urn play not to our physical (“sensual”)
ears, but to the ears of our imagination. And these are better loved (“more
endear’d), or at least the speaker of the poem thinks so, than our real
ears.
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Line 14:
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
A ditty is
a simple song. The flutes are asked to play with the songs, but they are
spirit songs = sung by ghosts. The songs don’t exist either; they have no
tone, as they exist only in the imagination of the person who is looking at
the urn. But hey, wait, even the urn itself doesn’t actually exist, as it
exists only in the mind of the poet. After all, the poet didn’t refer us to
an existing urn. He never said: “Please go to the British Museum and have a
look at the famous Apollo urn.” Or whatever other famous pot. In fact, we
have no idea which urn Keats is talking about. Even the urn is in the
imagination.
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Line 15:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
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Line 16:
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
These
lines and the ones until the end of the stanza teach us another aspect of
art. Visual art captures only one moment, and makes it eternal. The youth are
always under the trees. Fair means beautiful. The people are in the scene are
always hearing the same song. The trees will never lose their leaves.
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Line 17:
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
The lover
will never get the kiss he is waiting for.
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Line 18:
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;
But the
lover still has won a few points. He doesn’t need to be sad.
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Line 19:
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
The woman
he wants will not fade = she will not grow ugly and old. On the other hand,
he will never be happy,
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Line 20:
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
His love
will be forever, and she will forever be beautiful.
Stanza 3:
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Line 21:
Ah, happy happy boughs! that cannot shed
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Line 22:
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
Boughs are
branches of a tree. The branches will never lose (“shed”) their leaves. We
knew that already. They never bid the Spring adieu = they never say goodbye
to spring. It’s always spring.
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Line 23:
And, happy melodist, unwearièd,
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Line
24: For ever piping songs for ever new;
The happy
musician, unwearied (= not tired), is forever playing his flute songs that
are also forever new.
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Line 25:
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
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Line 26:
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
The word
“happy” is overused a little bit in these lines, don’t you think? Does the
poet really think that the creatures on the urn are happy? What do you think?
I’m beginning to doubt it.
Anyway,
everything looks good. The love is forever warm and fresh, on the point of
being enjoyed.
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Line 27:
For ever panting, and for ever young;
The lovers
are forever young and out of breath with excitement.
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Line 28:
All breathing human passion far above,
The lovers
are “above” human passion, which means they are at a distance from it;
they’re at a better place.
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Line 29:
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
Human
passion makes you worried and tired (cloy means wear out because something is
too sticky, too heavy, or too sweet).
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Line 30: A
burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Passion can
make you feel ill, as if you have a fever, with your forehead burning, and
your tongue sticking in your mouth (“parching” means dried out/very thirsty).
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So what have
we been reading so far?
Let’s stop
to try to understand Stanza 3.
This stanza
develops the thought from stanza 2 that nothing can change in the world of the
picture on the urn. It gives some more examples of that.
Then it
stresses the idea that as little as human passion is not a part of the scene on
the urn, neither is human suffering “all breathing human passion far above.”
Passion and suffering go together, is the idea here, and art is clean of that.
Or at least the conventional art in Keats’ time was.
Suffering
and/in Art
As I’ve
remarked above, before we started reading the poem, today we have plenty of
paintings and poems full with suffering. But probably that wasn’t what Keats
was looking for in his own art. He was looking for a way to say something
meaningful about how art could talk about life and how art can help us tolerate
suffering.
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Stanza
4: Time for a change of scene.
We’re now
looking at another picture on the urn.
Line 31:
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
Some
people are coming to a sacrifice = event of animal burning as offer to the
gods.
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Line 32:
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Altar =
the high place where offerings are made to the gods.
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Line 33:
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
The priest
is leading a young cow (“heifer) to be sacrificed. The cow is lowing =
mooing.
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Line 34:
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
Drest =
dressed. The cow’s legs (“flanks”) are decorated with flower chains.
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Line 35:
What little town by river or sea-shore,
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Line 36:
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
A citadel
is a fort. The people in the scene on the urn are imagined to be from a
little town.
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Line
37: Is emptied of its folk, this pious morn?
Is empty
of people, on this morning of worship. Morn = morning. Pious means believing,
worshipping.
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Line 38:
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
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Line 39:
Will silent be; and not a soul, to tell
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Line 40:
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
The people
in the scene are on their way to the sacrifice, so their town will forever be
empty and silent. No one (“not a soul”) will ever come back to explain what
the reason is the town is empty.
The “you”
(thou) is the town here.
Again it’s
an example of how the scene on the urn is frozen in time, and is devoid (=
empty) of humanity and life.
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Stanza 5:
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Line 41: O
Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
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Line 42:
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
Attic
means from Athens, the capital of Greece. “Brede” is an interwoven
pattern, like a braid but here it’s in marble. The urn is decorated with
marble men and women
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Line 43:
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Amongst
green trees and plants under their feet.
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Line
44: Thou, silent form! dost tease us out of thought
Thou =
you. The poet is talking to the urn again. The quiet urn which doesn’t speak
challenges our thoughts
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Line 45:
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
As much as
eternity = endless time. Pastoral = the sweet, peaceful country life.
The
speaker calls the scene on the urn cold and not sweet, so cold pastoral is a
paradox.
We’ve
already discussed why the scene is cold. No real passion is going on; the
scenes on the urn are frozen. But they may look sweet and attractive.
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Line 46:
When old age shall this generation waste,
When
people who live now will grow old and die,
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Line
47: Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
You (the
urn) will stay, in the middle of all kinds of trouble
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Line
48: Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
That is
not ours. You’ll be a friend to man, to whom you will say:
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Line 49:
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
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Line 50:
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’
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