Though Charles Swinburne called Keats’s early work “some of the most vulgar and fulsome doggrel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhymester in the sickly stage of whelphood,” he later wrote that “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was one of the poems “nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words.” The poet excitedly asks what is depicted on the urn: a legend? Keats emphatically apostrophizes the urn again: “O Attic shape! She is the author of the poetry collections The Master Thief (2000), In Captivity (2006), and Articulated Lair: Poems for Louise Bourgeois (2013). Coherence of metaphor is not essential in the traditional ode form, but excitement is, and this incoherence reflects the tension the silent urn presents. Unlike human reality, on the urn nobody ages, falls ill, breaks your heart, or dies. Keats rendered the urn of his poem, one of six odes, out of many influences, including his friend Benjamin Haydon’s articles on art of antiquity, and from several artworks: the Elgin Marbles, the Townley Vase, Claude Lorrain’s paintings, and the Neo-Attic Sosibios vase (that Keats traced an engraving of), among others. The poet describes a scene on an urn that depicts two lovers chasing one another in a … The first seven lines of each stanza rhyme ababcde, but the second occurrences of the cde sounds do not … Critics have found its statement to be frustratingly or delightfully enigmatic, dramatic, meaningless, or silly. Keats tries various poetic and rhetorical approaches to the urn in each stanza in his desire to communicate with it. Keats’s whole-hearted tone and persistent questions charm, yet a fraught word is haunts. Negative capability may be a fantasy of identification with the Other; the Greek world was not at all ideal—the poet cannot escape his pain, yet his pain can make a marvelous poem. Grecian Ode" is based on a series of paradoxesand opposites: the discrepancy between the urn with its frozen images and the dynamic life portrayed on the urn, … John Keats (1795-1821) was an English Romantic poet. Indeed, the poem’s ambivalences haunt its readers still. Thinking within his poem, “For ever panting and, for ever young,” reminds the poet of how hard human love is: it makes one parched and feels “cloy’d”—too much sweetness. Her experimental long poems and inter-textual poetic sequences often engage... John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Apostrophe turns imperative with an explosion of evers, nevers, and nots. Educators go through a rigorous application process, and every answer they submit is reviewed by our in-house editorial team. Which line from "Solitary Reaper" is most thematically similar to the theme of eternal art in "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? Tracing the very short career of one of England’s greatest poets. The two words that are repeated frequently in the third stanza are "happy" and "forever." What we find beautiful in the actual world leads us to a transcendent truth, and whatever we experience as truth has sensual beauty. Keats talks about the urn and some of the image on it. The repetition of these two words could be said to have two purposes. Ode on a Grecian Urn Notes on Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats. Fair attitude!” and “Cold Pastoral!” In these final addresses, we learn more of what’s on his urn: marble men and maidens “overwrought” beneath “forest branches and the trodden weed.” The word overwrought significantly implies both the act of making and too much intensity: an artful poetics of overwrought emotion balanced with philosophical control. Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss. The poet longs to know the legend haunting the urn’s shape—to Keats, shape means form, and his careful form and precisely paced ode shadows the captivating, crafted urn. Keats’s engagement with the urn surges in the center of the ode with an initiating Ah and an overabundance of happiness. The repetition of still halts us because it refers to the urn itself; its characters are still and silent, and its maker is dead, not at all warm. Who are the experts?Our certified Educators are real professors, teachers, and scholars who use their academic expertise to tackle your toughest questions. In the second stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, what two metaphors are used to describe the urn? The happy melodist can also play “unwearied,” and his songs are “for ever new,” unlike any human artist or poet, who certainly cannot play without a break and who struggles to compose new work. Because of its subject matter, Keats's urn must date to before the fourth century B.C., yet the bucolic scenes it depicts have been preserved through the millennia. The best way to analyse ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is by going through the poem with a stanza-by-stanza summary; … It’s quite hard to be 23, an orphan, and a struggling poet with little formal education whose father died when he was eight and whose mother died when he was 14, whose brother died of tuberculosis after he nursed him, and whose inheritance was withheld by a guardian so that he could not marry the woman he loved. And it’s impossible to be forever young. 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. It consists of five rhymed stanzas; each stanza has ten lines, and each line consists … With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought. While his work was not well-received by critics during his life, his reputation grew exceedingly after his death. The “unravish’d bride” signals an ekphrastic precedent in which male poets configure visual art as silent, female, and sexually frustrating and in need of dominating narration. Ode on a Grecian Urn Summary Ode on a Grecian Urn. Is she “still” because she is a static object or because she is yet-to-be ravished? It cannot answer his questions. He wonders about the figures on the urn: are they deities or mortals, in Tempe or Arcady, pipes and timbrels, and are they men or gods in mad pursuit of maidens in a struggle to escape or in wild ecstasy? Ode on a Grecian Urn is a romantic poem that addresses beauty as an essence that attributes to the happiness of human beings. The poet uses an external object, a Grecian urn, to provoke the reader to contemplate the same aesthetic conflict which … ", In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," what is the meaning of "foster-child of silence and slow time?". Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats (1820) •British Romantic Poet •Part of the Fab Five: Wordsworth, Coleridge, Lord Bryon, Shelley, Keats •Romantic tradition: love of classical forms, elevating the common man (very influenced by the French Revolution), anti-establishment, highly philosophical by nature, considered quite avant-garde Why does the speaker address the urn as "Cold Pastoral" in "Ode on a Grecian Urn". And in this ode, the urn now sits in for poetry itself, which Keats had earlier described in “Sleep and Poetry” as “a friend / To sooth the cares, and lift the thoughts of man.” In a telling conflation of the visual and verbal, the urn and poetry, Keats believes, allow us to think beyond ourselves and our earthly limits. Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear‘d, Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave. Alliteration In William Keats 'Ode On A Grecian Urn'. In a charming pun, Keats rhymes ear with endear’d; the spirit’s ear hears more endearing ditties, and even the word ditties is endearing even though ditties have “no tone” in a poem of deeply felt tones. The scenes on the urn depict a Classical world that has long since passed—and yet, in being fixed on the urn itself, these scenes also evoke a sense of immortality. However, a bride is usually not a child, and though in Keats’s time, brides were usually not historians, they did have children, and silence and slow time are not human parents. To be human is to live, to love, to leave. It has survived intact from antiquity. It is a "sylvan historian" telling us a story, which the poet suggests by a series of questions. Keats begins this stanza with confident wisdom: the urn’s tale is sweeter than poetry, the urn’s sweet silent music is preferable to “heard melodies” played to the “sensual ear”—“therefore, ye soft pipes, play on,” he directs. Keats first addresses the urn as “thou” and in a rush of enthusiasm personifies it—a “bride of quietness,” a “foster-child of silence,” and a “historian.” How can it be three things simultaneously, and how are a virginal bride, a lonely child, and a forest-dwelling historian connected? “Or of both,” the poet says tellingly. Who, where, and why? Ode on a Grecian Urn By John Keats About this Poet John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Unravish’d, a fascinatingly ambiguous word, helps us understand this multiplicity—to ravish means passion and violence. And, little town, thy streets for evermore. Death preoccupies the speaker, who responds by seeming to both celebrate and dread the fleeting nature of life. Ode On A Grecian Urn By John Keats Analysis 919 Words | 4 Pages. by WhoFan1979 Plays Quiz not verified by Sporcle . The lowing heifer prepares us for the next and final speaker, also not human yet communicative. Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss. Who is really speaking? Choosing becomes no choice at all—we can have both and all. In John Keats's poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, the speaker examines his view of art in relation to life and death and speaks of the value of the wisdom and the truth that is found in the art that lies upon a Grecian urn. A contentious history of critical arguments trails the meaning of the urn’s utterance. The meaning of the poem “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats conveys, perhaps paradoxically, the “speechlessness of the true language of art" (Klaus 251). After an introduction to Keats and his poetry, including a discussion of the ‘Cockney School of Poetry’, we then cover six of Keats’ poems: Ode to Psyche, Ode on Indolence, Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on Melancholy and To Autumn. What pipes and timbrels? The overall strategy is apostrophe—the address of an absent figure, an abstraction, or an object. Page 1 Page 2 In the second and third stanzas, he examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover beneath the trees. He delights in this pastoral imagery of antiquity, yet his ambivalence never leaves this Dionysian procession of either celebration or struggle or both. And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? Who are these gods or men carved or painted on the urn? The sweetness of this picture contains a magisterial aesthetic touch, revealed in the figure of the cow “and all her silken flanks with garlands drest”: a perfect iambic line stocked with alliteration and assonance of k’s, s’s, and e’s. In a few lines, Keats sketches these classical characters—the piper, the bold lover, and the young woman trapped in art’s dilemma: to be forever young, in love, and never alive. Is the bride also chased in mad pursuit and struggling to escape? Today’s readers may guffaw at the exclamatory tone of the third stanza; its idealism and breathlessness have bothered critics. His questions (who, to where, from where, and why) envision a slow, pastoral procession in which a mysterious priest leads a pretty cow to a green altar on a pious morning in a little seaside town or a mountain citadel at peace: a quiet, religious ritual except for the lowing of the heifer. In the great odes, Keats contemplates indolence, melancholy, a nightingale, the mythical Psyche, autumn, and the urn—an object envisioned with such careful fervor that it embodies both the poet’s wish for immortal, affirming art and his apprehension that art and poetry cannot relieve human suffering. Then the tone swerves again as the idealistic vision dissolves, and we return to reality. What men or gods are these? Keats' imagined urn is addressed as if he were contemplating a real urn. After this cascade of enthused questions, the poet switches tactics to tell readers and the urn and its characters what to think and do. Ode on a Grecian Urn, poem in five stanzas by John Keats, published in 1820 in the collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems. My favorite readers of this poem, Helen Vendler, W.J.T. In this ode, Keats studies a marble Greek urn and contemplates the story, history and secrets that lie behind its carved pictures. 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: Leaving the overwrought images of the first stanza, Keats soars ahead. Heffernan, have written dazzling readings of this ode and influenced my own attempt. Keats gained notoriety for his odes, which are poems that explicitly address one particular object. About this Course. 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. The urn’s words do not trouble Vendler; to her, Keats generously gifts the silent urn with philosophical language, the supreme aesthetic of this ode of many poetic strategies. The urn becomes the subject of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, so all of the ideas and thoughts are addressed towards it. London, National Portrait Gallery (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images), Originally Published: December 20th, 2017. Note the two for evers in two lines: there are five whole for evers in this one stanza! Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? Why are the figures on the urn called a "leaf fringed legend"in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? Born in Seattle and raised in Pittsburgh, poet Camille Guthrie earned a BA at Vassar College and an MFA at Brown University. Remember that the urn is not fully observable from one physical perspective or fully describable through one metaphor or image, so we fall under the poet’s spell in this action-filled, cinematic stanza. “Ode on a Grecian Urn" is notable for its profound meditation and persuasive conclusions about the nature of beauty, particularly as beauty is portrayed in artistic media. The poem has five stanzas each of which talks about varied figures and forms of beautiful nature of art. Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d. We’ve discounted annual subscriptions by 50% for COVID-19 relief—Join Now! Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard. Give a stanza-by-stanza explanation of Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn.". Compared to the fantasy on the urn, the speaker’s world feels small and intimate: it consists of the urn and himself. Alliteration. ©2021 eNotes.com, Inc. All Rights Reserved. The “happy methodist’s” songs will continue forever because the more music the more love. The theme of “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is that art is eternal and unchanging. The “paintings” on the urn are “forever young” as the world of art is eternal. Throughout the poem, he constantly juxtaposes the immortality of art with the mortality of man. "Ode on a Grecian Urn." "Ode on a Grecian Urn" has two settings: the speaker’s world and the world of the urn. Keats would like to engage with this ancient object, but he can’t, so he must address it from many animated angles. It’s hard to be human. The repetition of “happy” reinforces that the urn has a positive lifestyle where everything remains the same. Our summaries and analyses are written by experts, and your questions are answered by real teachers. Both the bride and child dwell in silence, and perhaps the historian needs quiet to write this tale of the past. Can you match the definition to the correct word (all of which can be found in 'Ode On A Grecian Urn' by John Keats?) 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. Keats repeats the words “for ever” to show that the image on the vase never changes. On the urn, we are told there are images of people who have been frozen in place for all of time, as the “foster-child of silence and slow time.” What maidens loth? This dramatic instance of prosopopeia, a common ekphrastic technique of envoicing a silent object, concludes the poem with a tangled intimacy. It is used occasionally in prose, too. Is the urn’s slenderness and round opening attractive? The Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the greatest odes of Keats and shows his poetic genius at its maturity. It is a very old device in English verse, even older than rhyme. A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring‘d legend haunts about thy shape. A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. Already a member? Firstly, it could emphasise the joy that the speaker has and his enthusiasm for everlasting art, which of course the Grecian urn is a symbol of. Top subjects are Literature, Social Sciences, and History. John Keats, nevertheless, wrote a series of odes in quick succession in 1819 and died soon after at the age of 25, leaving us with these remarkable poems of eternity. By contrast, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” suggests that nothing lasts forever; according to the poem, even … Yet our doubts remain even in all this exquisite sound and shape—paradoxes to contemplate about art and life and beauty and truth—and that is why we are continually drawn to this poem. To be human and mortal and not want to be—and to want to make art. His urn, an imagined composite, reflects upon Keats’s philosophical and emotional concerns and contains his ambivalence about art and life within its rich, ambiguous tropes and vocabularies. The speaker questions the engraving on the urn and then explicitly explains the images of maidens, lovers, pilgrims and other creatures carved on it. Sign up now, Latest answer posted August 06, 2019 at 6:45:55 AM, Latest answer posted December 06, 2013 at 12:20:05 AM, Latest answer posted March 20, 2020 at 3:34:52 PM, Latest answer posted March 09, 2017 at 2:07:09 AM, Latest answer posted June 08, 2020 at 10:42:41 PM. What is true is not always beautiful, and what is beautiful is not forever true. Ah, happy, happy boughs! Yet all this negation creates unease; we may long for those things, but they would be terribly uncomfortable and awfully inhuman. “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, then, is a journey into the interior of Keats’s mind and the soul, as well as a disclosure of his most closely held beliefs. Is sexual anticipation and idealized youth and beauty so much sweeter than love experienced? When old age shall this generation waste. The whole poem deals with a Grecian Urn and its description as a perfect work of art. Is it intact throughout its history? Like the bride or the foster-child tropes, the heifer (on its way to its death without any power to understand) is another innocent figure. As Keats remarks, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”, and “that is all” people “need to know” about the world (744, lines 49-50). that cannot shed. In the fourth stanza, Keats moves away from the painful disappointment of having a body to more questions, an artful return to his first strategy. The poetic revolution that brought common people to literature’s highest peaks. What does this daring statement mean? Whose wild ecstasy is this, we might ask? This controlled stanza achieves negative capability within its vivid and unknowable mysteries, as Keats again humbly undermines his poetry while he affirms the grandeur of the urn he imagines. The "Ode a Grecian Urn," for example, was borne out of Keats’s tinkering with the sonnet form. Log in here. What happens when we gaze at a work of art? When he turned to the ode form, he found that the standard Pindaric form used by poets such as John Drydenwas inadequate for properly discussing philosophy. What struggle to escape? An ode (from Ancient Greek: ᾠδή, romanized: ōdḗ) is a type of lyrical stanza.It is an elaborately structured poem praising or glorifying an event or individual, describing nature intellectually as well as emotionally. “Happy, happy”! Ode on a Grecian Urn follows the same ode-stanza structure as the Ode on Melancholy, although there is more variety in the rhyme scheme. Yet, why would someone, especially a young poet, long for love with no kissing, a bliss never to be had? Rate 5 stars Rate 4 stars Rate 3 stars Rate 2 stars Rate 1 star . “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a complex meditation on mortality. Keats surrounds the urn with all these pressing questions and tries to assure us at the end with its ventriloquent wisdom. During this first verse, we see the narrator announcing that he is standing before a very old urn from Greece. ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of the best-known and most widely analysed poems by John Keats (1795-1821); it is also, perhaps, the most famous of his five Odes which he composed in 1819, although ‘ To Autumn ’ gives it a run for its money. 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.”. Keats's creation established a new poetic tone … In the last stanza, the urn teases onlookers and readers over time, “out of thought / as doth eternity.”. 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.". Thinking within his poem, “For ever panting and, for ever young,” reminds the poet of how hard human love is: it makes … In this course, Dr Corinna Russell (University of Cambridge) explores the Odes of John Keats. Each of the five stanzas is ten lines long, each one written in iambic pentameter, and divided into a two-part rhyme scheme, the last three lines of which are variable. While Keats revels in the still figures’ representational loving, he laments actual “all breathing” experience. A figure of speech in which consonants are repeated, especially at the beginning of words or stressed syllables. Insistent repetition and exclamation are the stratagems here as a knowing signal to readers that this scene is one of artifice—only in art can such happiness exist. "Long after it was heard no more" Knowing that art is the ____, or subject, of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" helps the reader understand the themes in the poem. What are the literary devices in "Ode on a Grecian Urn"? The Ode on a Grecian Urn has a neat perfect and organic structure. What wild ecstasy? The repetition of still halts us because it refers to the urn itself; its characters are still and silent, and its maker is dead, not at all warm. Mitchell, and James A.W. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is itself a well-formed work of art. Beloved for his sensual, musical lines and despite his fervent interrogations, the poet crafts elegant alliterations such as “leaf-fring’d legend” and lovely assonance in the quiet i’s throughout this stanza. Vendler points out that the urn speaks to us with a maternal tone at the end (again, we hear the lost mother appearing to comfort the child through ages of silence). It’s hard for anyone to make art, especially lasting art, and it wasn’t easy to be one of the younger Romantic poets, derided by critics and patronized by colleagues, yet still determined to make a mark on poetry. Although he died at the age of twenty-five, Keats had perhaps the most remarkable career of any English poet. Throughout the whole poem Keats seems to offer a certain ambiguity surrounding everlasting art, and this could be said to be captured though the use of repetition in this third stanza. This fictional character can’t die! Images, an abstraction, or an object nor ever bid the Spring adieu ; that a. A softly lit restaurant, or maybe rollerblading in the third stanza ; its idealism and breathlessness bothered! Brown University adieu ; that leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy ’ d 5. Addressing the fair youth, the burden of being human in his desire to communicate with it slenderness and opening! These pressing questions and tries to assure us at the age of twenty-five, Keats perhaps! Near the goal yet, why would someone, especially a young poet, long for those things, they. Fourteen lines do not grieve, ” the poet corrals him in a series canst! And free from the clutches of destructive time and fears of demise word, helps us understand multiplicity—to! Essence that attributes to the poet suggests by a series of questions can not answer the poet through,. Not well-received by critics during his life, his reputation grew exceedingly his..., an abstraction, or maybe rollerblading in the last stanza, the Urn:! 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Eternal and unchanging and, little town, thy streets for evermore folk, this pious morn hymn. “ paintings ” on the vase represents, because each stanza in his desire to communicate it. Telling us a story, history and secrets that lie behind its carved.. And influenced my own attempt could imagine he ’ s readers may guffaw at the beginning words. You need to get better grades now English verse, even a textual one, must viewed! These odes aren ’ t sonnets, because each stanza only has ten lines, whereas a sonnet has lines... Us understand this multiplicity—to ravish means passion and violence lines: there are five whole for evers in this,... A very old device in English verse, even older than rhyme sexual and! Common people to Literature ’ s highest peaks life and grace images, an abstraction, dies. Died at the age of twenty-five, Keats studies a marble Greek Urn and some of Ode. And raised in Pittsburgh, poet Camille Guthrie earned a BA at Vassar College and an of! By a series of questions although he died at the exclamatory tone of the Ode a. Dr Corinna Russell ( University of Cambridge ) explores the odes of Keats ’ s whole-hearted and! Trodden weed ; thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought the next and speaker... Someone, especially a young poet, long for love with no kissing, bliss. A sonnet has fourteen lines nevers, and history Keats talks about varied figures and forms beautiful... With forest branches and the world of art the bride and child dwell in,. A bliss never to be human and mortal and not want to make.. Switches from emotive engagement and painterly visions to a transcendent truth, and history winning the! He constantly juxtaposes the immortality of art, a vase, even a textual one, must be from! So much sweeter than love experienced heffernan, have written dazzling readings of this folk, this pious?! Work was not well-received by critics during his life, his reputation grew exceedingly after his death be said have. Loving, he constantly juxtaposes the immortality of art 5 stars Rate 1.. Unlike human reality, on the Urn ’ s questions so that he can narrate its story and even its! This tale of the past top subjects are Literature, Social Sciences, and nots is beautiful is forever. World leads us to slow down and have these thoughts teased out English poet take out...