Page 300 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

Unit 28: John Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn, Ode to a Nightingale and Ode to Autumn

Objectives Notes
After studying this unit, you will be able to:
• Explain briefly the text, theme and summary of the poem Ode on Grecian urn
• Explain briefly the text, theme and summary of the poem Ode to a Nightingale
• Explain briefly the text, theme and summary of the poem Ode to Autumn
• Discuss the detailed analysis of all poems.

Introduction

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he
was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that
his work had been in publication for only four years before his death. Although his poems were not
generally well received by critics during his life, his reputation grew after his death to the extent
that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He
has had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers: Jorge Luis Borges
stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.
The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today
his poems and letters are some of the most popular and analyzed in English literature. ‘Ode on a
Grecian Urn’ was the third of the five ‘great odes’ of 1819, which are generally believed to have
been written in the following order - Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn, Melancholy, and Autumn.
Of the five, Grecian Urn and Melancholy are merely dated ‘1819’. Critics have used vague references
in Keats’s letters as well as thematic progression to assign order. This ode contains the most discussed
two lines in all of Keats’s poetry - “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” - that is all/Ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know.’
The exact meaning of those lines is disputed by everyone; no less a critic than TS Eliot considered
them a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem. Scholars have been unable to agree to whom the
last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed. Arguments can be made for any of the four most
obvious possibilities, -poet to reader, urn to reader, poet to urn, poet to figures on the urn. The
issue is further confused by the change in quotation marks between the original manuscript copy of
the ode and the 1820 published edition.

28.1 Ode on a Grecian Urn

28.1.1 Text

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?

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