Page 310 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

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

He does this to preserve a perfect ten-syllable iambic pentameter, which you can read more about Notes
in the “Form and Meter” section.
But you can think of the accent as being like a notation on a piece of sheet music, which might be
important in light of the fact that the speaker is talking about music at this point. Is he comparing
himself with the “happy melodist”? We think so.
In line 24 the speaker says that the songs played by the musician are always fresh and new. Again,
that’s because the world of the urn never changes.
It would be as if our world froze while you were listening to the radio, so whatever was on the Top-
40 station would always be considered hip and catchy.
Of course, in the real world, we know that most pop songs don’t last in the Top-40 for more than a
few weeks. We get sick of the old songs and crave new ones, which is why there will always be a
need for young teen pop stars to replace the older teen pop stars of the year before.

Line 25
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
This is the place where a lot of readers think the speaker starts to go off in his own world.
Three “happy” in one line? We imagine our speaker is the kind of person who puts 25 packets of
sugar into their iced tea. In case you hadn’t noticed, he likes sweet things. But do these “happy”
thoughts have any substance?
If you want to be less cynical, you could also read these lines as the speaker encouraging the musician
to keep playing by calling for more songs.
He thinks the music and “love” go hand in hand, so more music means more love. He’s like the
crowd at a concert clapping its hands and shouting, “Another! Two more songs! Ten more songs!”

Line 26-27
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
The birds and the bees. When it comes to sex, lots of people think that the most exciting part is
definitely before the act itself. It is the time of attraction and pursuit.
By contrast, “after” is the time when people often wonder what they were so worked up about. On
a longer time scale, the same holds true for love affairs. They are usually most exciting in the
beginning, before things settle down into a routine.
The speaker seems to have returned to the first image on the urn, that of the “men or gods” chasing
a bunch of women, and he imagines that everyone in the scene is at the peak of their erotic excitement.

The men are just about the catch the women, but they haven’t yet, so they always have the big
moment ahead of them.
Line 26 refers to the bodies of the women, which are “warm and still to be enjoy’d.”
Line 27 refers to both men and women, who are “panting” from their chase.
Keeping in his mode of repetition, the speaker keeps using the words “for ever” to make the point
that the people on the urn are frozen in time. The world of art is eternal.
We’re now going to argue in favor of a different interpretation. Our speaker is showing definite
symptoms of sexual excitement himself, like the pulsating rhythm of his speech and the repetition
of his words (being sexually excited isn’t the most creative human state). He might need a cold
shower.

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 303