Page 312 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

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

Lines 35-37 Notes
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
We can now piece together the whole third scene. There’s a priest, a cow, a green altar, and a crowd
of people following behind in anticipation of the sacrifice.
The speaker infers that this crowd must have come from somewhere, from some “little town,” but
the town isn’t depicted, so he has to imagine what it must look like.
He imagines things in the world of the urn just like we, the readers, imagine what is going on in the
poem. Very curious.
This scene doesn’t have anything besides people and cows in it, but he comes up with a few guesses
as to what the town looks like. It is either a.) By a river, b.) By a sea-shore, or c.) On a mountain.
If it’s on a mountain, he imagines a small fortress called a “citadel” must protect it. But there isn’t a
great need to be defended, so the citadel is “peaceful.”
This truly is a perfect world. Everyone is outside, enjoying the weather and looking forward to the
ritual. The town is “emptied” because it is a “pious” or holy morning.

Lines 38-40
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
The speaker talks to the town to inform it that its streets will always be “silent” and “desolate” of
people.
Although the speaker knows that everyone is headed to a sacrifice, he doesn’t know what the sacrifice
is for, and he can never find out because there is “not a soul, to tell” the reason for the holy day.

Stanza V Summary
Lines 41-43
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Compared to the steamy stanza III, stanza IV was a mellow, low-key affair. But in the last stanza the
speaker suddenly gets excited again.
It’s like someone stuck a shot of adrenaline in his arm. He starts yelling about the beautiful appearance
of the urn, as if noticing it for the first time.
He has raptures over its “Attic shape,” which just means it has a distinctively Greek appearance,
and its “fair attitude,” which means a graceful posture. (A “brede” is a braid, like a braid of hair.)
The lovers are “braided” together in the chiseled marble, which is a wild image. It makes the carving
sound complicated and ornate.
Indeed, the speaker calls the depiction “overwrought,” or too complicated.
There’s just too much detail and craftsmanship. This might remind us of the use of the word “cloy’d”
in stanza III, another occasion where the speaker thought that the urn’s artistry was just too rich.

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