Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats

Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats

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?

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!

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.

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.

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."

Context

This young and ambitious man, who went to meet his friend at the British Museum, found himself astonished and preoccupied by the grand and alien classical Greek works of art he encountered. Haunted by the loss of his mother and brother and entering a period of meditation on aesthetics, he found himself ready to write poems about, as his Poetry Foundation biography states, “the irresolvable contrarieties of experience” and the transformative powers of the imagination. 

                Urns were used in ancient Greece to hold the ashes of the dead. Keats does not describe a specific urn in his ode, but he knew Greek art from engravings, and experienced it at first-hand on visits to the British Museum, which had recently taken possession of the Elgin Marbles. Greek sculptures were admired for their formal perfection and ideal beauty, by which, wrote William Hazlitt in his essay ‘On Gusto’, ‘they are raised above the frailties of pain or passion’.

The Elgin Marbles

Stanza 1

Keats addresses the urn in a form of  apostrophe (the address of an absent figure, an abstraction, or an object.), revealing that it can 'express a flowery tale' much better than a poet and excitedly tries to guess what is depicted on the urn.

'Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / thou foster-child of silence and slow time, / sylvan historian'

Usually poets represent contraries in binaries, yet Keats’s eagerness demands a third option, an aesthetic tactic that enacts his idea of negative capability—to embrace contradictions and uncertainties “without any irritable reaching after fact & reason.”

'unravish'd bride of quietness' - an unravished bride suggests someone who is trapped between two states of being - virginity and married life. This could give the urn a kind of sexual tension and excitement, emphasised by the idea of ekphrasis (ekphrastic tradition is where the verbal is male and the pictorial is female). The urn is female, silent and sexually frustrating.

'who canst thus express / a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme'

Keats undermines his own poetry, saying the silence of the urn is more beautiful and poetic than written verse.

'mad''struggle''wild' creates a semantic field of fervour and excitement, a complete contrast to the 'quietness' of the urn.

The quick succession of possibilities framed as questions creates an illusion of choice but 'or or both' suggests it could be all or none of these suggestions. The regular two questions per line creates a kind of rhythm and mimics the passion and intensity with which the poet speaks.

Stanza 2 

The second stanza describes two lovers frozen in love on a section of the urn, the poet is enraptured with the way their love cannot fade.

'therefore , ye soft pipes, play on' despite the silence and stillness of the urn, the poet still invites it to play its 'ditties of no tone'. This musicality could display his desire to connect with the urn through shared hearing

The consonance of 'spirit ditties' is contrasted against the assonance of 'no tone', their contrasting repeated sounds creating a kind of musicality through poetry, contradicting the way he says 'those unheard are sweeter'.

Perhaps 'those unheard are sweeter' are because they are forever in expectation, and the expectation is sweeter than the mortal reality of music and the way it fades as soon as it has been played.

The poet attempts to reassure the Lovers that although he 'never, never canst thou kiss' 'she will never fade'

Despite the positive tone of this stanza, the repetition of 'never' creates unease and artificiality, a lack of freedom and choice.

The two lovers 'beneath the trees' could be seen as a parallel to Adam and Eve, by never touching they are forever in a state of innocence and purity that 'cannot fade'. However, this is tainted by the 'bold lover's' desire to 'kiss' the maiden, the unfulfilled intention making the poem seem unnatural, a denial of man's true nature.

Stanza 3

This stanza opens with an exclamatory 'ah', the height of the poet's engagement with the urn in the centre of the poem. The intensity of repetition and breathlessness that is produced by an influx of commas ('ah, happy, happy boughs!''More happy love! More happy, happy love!') is almost sarcastic and delusional

'for ever warm and still to be enjoy'd' marks a dark turning point as the reader is reminded that the urn is cold and nonliving, its maker dead and its presence only relevant because the poet understands the images it is portraying - the poet is the only aspect of life surrounding the urn.

the word 'ever' is repeated 5 times, emphasising the longevity of art and its transcendental presence and ability to communicate times before. Yet its repetition is almost threatening, as if the urn is being condemned to remain in this state forever in a constant state of spring and new life - a complete contradiction to the reality.

'for ever panting, and for ever young;' panting would suggest exhaustion and how hard human love is, almost contradicting the idea of 'for ever young'. perpetual youth is a very Romantic idea where sustained creativity and imagination fades as you get older.

The final three lines abandon happiness and portray real love as akin to an illness that causes a 'burning forehead' and 'parching tongue', the present tense of these verbs makes them very present and in the moment, collating them alongside the constancy of the 'happiness' the urn allegedly radiates.

These symptoms are similar to that of tuberculosis, something that Keats' mother and brother died from. These images often creep their way into his poetry as a sobering reminder of reality and mortality.

'cloy's' suggests that too much love and happiness is unnatural and detrimental, reminds me of the sentiment of 'ode on melancholy' where Keats explains that you must also embrace sadness and loss in order to fully appreciate positive emotions

Stanza 4

This stanza looks at a different aspect of the urn, detailing a sacrifice that is about to happen, a mysterious priest and a town that will forever lay abandoned.

As well as detailing the liminal space between innocence and sexual corruption in the first scene, the heifer being brought to 'sacrifice' explores the space between life and death.

It is almost mournful that the poet describes the cow's beauty, its 'silken flanks and garlands', just before it is about to be slaughtered at the 'green altar' in an act of human tradition. 

This stanza employs pastoral imagery to paint a picture of an idealised country life yet 'for evermore / will silent be', the more negative use of 'ever' contrasting to the perpetual state of happiness it was used to describe before. 

Keats achieves negative capability in this stanza with the use of rhetorical questions that can never be answered, Keats again humbly undermines his poetry while he affirms the grandeur of the urn he imagines.

the word 'desolate' creates another moment of isolation and despair, no one can ever express the tale of this little town as the artist cannot return from the dead and the urn itself literally holds ashes.

Stanza 5

In this last stanza Keats finally gives the urn itself a voice, despite continually emphasising its silence and stillness. He seems to see the urn more for what it is as a whole, widening his perspective to show what it can teach us and what it will become.

'marble men and maidens overwrought' - overwrought means too much ornateness, too much detail and thought. The detail distracts from the reality that these figures will never live or fulfil what they are about to do on the urn, the repetition of -m sounds showing how they all begin to merge together in this state of flux

'thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought / as doth eternity' - the verb 'tease' suggests an element of playfulness and motive that the urn has not been given before, personifying it to the point where the poet feels almost threatened by what it presents. This statement could show how art challenges us to question eternity and philosophical questions, teasing us out of our mortal lives. Or does it take us away from our mundane human existence with pain and sadness, explaining why the pastoral is 'cold' and its form 'silent'.

'Cold pastoral!' To me this exclamation seems like anger on the speaker's behalf, he feels betrayed that the pastoral scenes portrayed are simply pieces of 2D art, completely unrealistic and artificial, reminding him of the reality of human life.

However, the urn will remain a 'friend to man' when 'old age shall this generation waste', perhaps indicating its presence has something to add to the present, to help us to challenge the limits and capabilities of mortality.

"beauty is truth, truth beauty"

This line ends the poem with a kind of tangled intimacy, it is the urn speaking yet it is the poet who is able to give it this voice, conflating the urn, the artist and the poet in a single line, giving them a relationship that perhaps is the only reason the urn carries any kind of gravity.

Excerpts taken from the poetry foundation :

What happens when we gaze at a work of art? Does it speak to us through time, or are its silence and distance incomprehensible? Can poetry ever capture the power of the visual arts? 

The poem and the urn do not have one meaning; the point is to be “overwrought”—to dwell in the difficult paradoxes, questions, and exclamations—and not reach for the simple or factual. To be human and mortal and not want to be—and to want to make art.

https://www.bl.uk/romantics-and-victorians/articles/an-introduction-to-ode-on-a-grecian-urn-time-mortality-and-beauty

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/articles/145240/john-keats-ode-on-a-grecian-urn

https://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section4/page/2/