Ode on a grecian urn

John Keats' Ode on a Grecian Urn.

1. Ode
on
A Grecian
Urn
John Keats

2. What does
Keats tell us
in this
poem?

3. Human Life
1.Aging
2.Changes
3.Finite Love
4.Death
5.Decay
6.Desperation

4. ART: Eternal; Immutable; Perfect Beauty; Eternal love; Truth; Happiness.

5. 1.A Work of Art is an
expression of Beauty.
2.Beauty is Truth and Truth
Beauty.
3.Art has an Aesthetic
function.
4.Art has a moral function.
5.Art provides comfort and
solace to many generations.

6. 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 haunt 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?

7. 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.

8. 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.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vale_of_Tempe

9. Arcadia has its present-day
capital at Tripoli. It forms the
largest prefecture on the
Peloponnesian peninsula.
Arcady is Arcadia, a
picturesque region in the
Peloponnesus (a peninsula
making up the southern part
of Greece).
Arcadia remained a rustic, secluded area, and its inhabitants
became proverbial as primitive herdsmen leading simple
pastoral unsophisticated yet happy lives, to the point that
Arcadia may refer to some imaginary idyllic paradise,
immortalized by Virgil's Eclogues, and later by Jacopo
Sannazaro in his pastoral masterpiece, Arcadia (1504)

10. Keats wonders whether the images he
sees represent humans or gods.
And, he asks, who are the reluctant
(“loath”) maidens and what is the activity
taking place?

11. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unhear’d
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!

12. Ode
on
A Grecian
Urn
John Keats

14. Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
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.

15. 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.

16. 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.

17. 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.

18. 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.

19. 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.

20. 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.

21. 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.

22. What roles do the
following play in the
poem?
1. The urn
2. The figures on the urn
3. The poet
4. The reader(s)

23. References:
http://englishhistory.net/keats/contents.html
John Keats's sketch of the Sosibios Vase