Page 306 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

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

Line 2 Notes
Thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time,
The urn is called the “foster-child” of Silence and slow Time. A “foster-child” is a kid who is adopted
and raised by people other than his or her own parents.
In this case, the urn has been adopted by “Silence” and “slow Time,” which, if anything, sounds
like an even more boring couple than Mrs. Urn and Mr. Quietness.
The point is that the pot is thousands of years old, and it has spent most of its time buried in ruble
or tucked away in the corner of some museum or some private collector’s house. But these were not
its “original” circumstances.
The true “parent” of the urn would have been the Greek artist who created it. Furthermore, the pot
might have had a ceremonial use rather than just being a pretty thing to look at.
But after the decline of Greek civilization, the pot lived on to age in silence, outside of the vibrant
culture in which he was created.
Lines 3-4
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
So far, the speaker has addressed the urn by a bunch of different names and titles. It’s like saying,
“You, John Doe, husband of Jane Doe, son of Susie and Richard Doe, lawyer at the firm of . . .” Now
this line gives us the urn’s job or profession, which is “Sylvan historian.”
Bet you’ve never seen that one on a business card, huh? “Sylvan” is a just a word derived from
Latin that refers to woods or forests. This makes the urn a historian of people who live in forests. It’s
a storyteller (the word “history” is derived from a Latin word for “story” or “tale”), and a darn
good one.
In fact, the urn is a better storyteller than the poet.
The urn tells stories using pictures, while the poet uses “rhymes.” The tale told by the urn is “flowery”
and “sweet,” as if you could bury your nose in it like a bee inside a daffodil.
This is appropriate, because this particular urn depicts scenes that are set in nature. Moreover,
“flowery” works as a pun. A tale is “flowery” if it’s complicated and has a lot of ins and outs.
But the story told on an urn is also “flowery” in a more literal sense: the illustrations on urns were
often framed by a pattern of leaves or flowers.

Line 5-7
What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
This is the point when our speaker leans in to take a closer look at the urn. He’s trying to figure
what’s going on in the carved pictures that encircle it.
We got the flowers in line 4, and now we get the leaves. The story or “legend” on the pot is “leaf-
fringed,” which builds on the idea of the “Sylvan” or forest historian.
But this “legend” suddenly sounds a lot like a ghost story: it “haunts.” This is another pun, because
“haunt” can just mean to exist in a certain place, but it has that obvious connection to the dead.
Indeed, we would expect that all the characters of a story that was first told thousands of years ago
would be dead by now.
And who are these characters, the speaker is wondering. Are they gods (“deities”) or just normal
human beings (“mortals”)?

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