Page 113 - DENG203_ELECTIVE_ENGLISH_IV

Elective English—IV

Notes 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.”

Task Recite the poem Ode on a Grecian Urn.

6.3.1 Explanation

In the first stanza, the poet stands before an ancient Grecian urn and addresses it. He is engrossed
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.” The poet also describes the urn as a “historian” that tells
a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn. He asks about the legend these
figures depict and from where they come. He stares at a picture that appears to depict a group of
men following 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 one more picture on the urn, this time of a young man playing a pipe, lying
with his lover under a glade of trees. The poet says that the piper’s “unheard” melodies are
sweeter than mortal melodies because they remain natural and unaffected by time. He tells the
youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not mourn,
because her beauty will never fade. In the third stanza, he sees the trees surrounding the lovers
and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves. He is happy for the piper as his songs will
be “for ever new,” and content that the love of the girl and the boy will last forever, unlike
mortal love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and ultimately vanishes, leaving
behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue. “In the fourth stanza, the speaker
observes another picture on the urn, this one is of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be
foregone. He wonders where they are going (“To what green altar, O mysterious priest...”) and
from where they have come. The speaker here pictures 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, may never return. The speaker in the final stanza, again addresses the urn itself, saying that
it, like Eternity, “doth tease us out of thought.” He feels that when his generation is long dead,
the urn will continue to be there, telling future generations its enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is
truth, truth beauty.” The speaker says that that is the one thing the urn knows and is by far the
only thing it needs to know.
Stanza 1
Keats calls the urn an “unravish’d bride of quietness” because it has been there for centuries
without going through any changes (it is “unravished”) as it sits quietly on a shelf or table. The
poet also calls it a “foster-child of silence and time” because it is has been adopted by time and
silence, parents who have talked about on the urn eternal stillness. Additionally, Keats feels that

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