Page 309 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

British Poetry

Notes live on an urn, you’re just a picture, and you can never move or change. But there’s a definite
upside to the situation: you’ll always feel just as strongly about her, and she’ll always be really
beautiful.
This is an absurd thing to say, and it tells us more about the speaker than it does about the lover.
The speaker wants to imagine a world in which nothing changes and good things never come to an
end.
The speaker isn’t the most tactful guy in the world, and he repeats the word “never” twice as if to
rub in the bad news. He also describes the chase scene as if it were an athletic race, for which having
sex is considered “winning.” It’s like the Romantic poetry equivalent of locker-room banter.

Stanza III Summary

Lines 21-22
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
The branches of the trees never lose their leaves because the world of the urn never changes.
The urn is to the Ancient Greek world what a Norman Rockwell painting is to 1950s America: it
captures a moment in time in which everything seems to be wholesome and happy.
In this case, it’s always springtime, and the trees are always green.
After repeating the word “never” twice in line 17, the speaker seems to have decided that repeating
words is his new thing, and he does it a bunch of times in this stanza. He uses the word, “happy,”
twice in a row in line 21. He also continues to talk to objects that can’t respond to him, like the
“boughs” or branches of the trees depicted on the urn.
Finally, he continues to treat the urn as a real place, and one where things never change.
To bid “adieu” is to say “goodbye” in French with the expectation that you won’t see someone
again for a long time. If someone goes down the street to the corner store, you say “au revoir,” but
if someone moves to another state, you say “adieu.”
Fortunately for the tree branches, they never have to say goodbye to the Spring, which will never be
replaced by summer in this world.
Some readers have thought that the repeated use of the word “happy” smacks of desperation on the
part of the speaker, as if he were trying to convince himself that eternal springtime would be a great
thing, rather than a huge snooze-fest.
After all, how long can you sit around looking at tree leaves?
Lines 23-24

And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
These lines make us think that the speaker is still talking about the second scene of the urn: the
young musician playing the pipes under a tree.
Now he calls him a “melodist.” Unlike, say, the piano, you can’t play both melody and harmony on
the pipes. You have to pick one, and the most obvious choice is to play a melody.
The “melodist,” you probably won’t be shocked to learn, is also “happy,” like everyone else in this
world. He is also “unwearied,” which means he never gets tired.
In your version of the poem, you might notice that the word has an accent at the end, so that it
reads, “un-wear-i-ed.” What’s that about? It means that Keats wants you to pronounce the word
with four syllables, instead of three.

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