Page 332 - DENG405_BRITISH_POETRY

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

In this poem, the act of creation is pictured as a kind of self-harvesting; the pen harvests the fields of Notes
the brain, and books are filled with the resulting “grain.” In “To Autumn,” the metaphor is developed
further; the sense of coming loss that permeates the poem confronts the sorrow underlying the
season’s creativity. When Autumn’s harvest is over, the fields will be bare, the swaths with their
“twined flowers” cut down, the cider-press dry, the skies empty. But the connection of this harvesting
to the seasonal cycle softens the edge of the tragedy. In time, spring will come again, the fields will
grow again, and the birdsong will return. As the speaker knew in “Melancholy,” abundance and
loss, joy and sorrow, song and silence are as intimately connected as the twined flowers in the
fields. What makes “To Autumn” beautiful is that it brings an engagement with that connection out
of the realm of mythology and fantasy and into the everyday world. The development the speaker
so strongly resisted in “Indolence” is at last complete: He has learned that an acceptance of mortality
is not destructive to an appreciation of beauty and has gleaned wisdom by accepting the passage of
time.

28.4 Summary

• “Ode on a Grecian Urn” follows the same ode-stanza structure as the “Ode on Melancholy,”
though it varies more the rhyme scheme of the last three lines of each stanza.
• A man is whispering sweet nothings to a Grecian urn, an ancient Greek pot that is covered in
illustrations.
• A priest is leading a cow to be sacrificed. People have come from a nearby town to watch.
• Like the “Ode on Melancholy,” “To Autumn” is written in a three-stanza structure with a
variable rhyme scheme.

28.5 Keywords

Ecstasy : Overwhelming or rapture.
Urn : Vase with a foot a rounded body, used esp. for the ashes of the dead.
Autumn : Season between summer and winter.
Piper : Person who plays a pipe.
Baffle : Frustrate, hinder.

28.6 Review Questions

1. What are emotions and desires does Keats speaker describe in connection with the
nightingale?
2. Keats respectfully opposes Wordsworth’s poetry of the egotistical subline. How does the
present poem offer an alternative focus for poetry?
3. What paradox develops beginning with the second stanza and developing through the rest
of the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn”?
4. How does the stanzaic patterning of the poem “To Autumn” along with other formal features,
reinforce the seasonal mood that keats explores?

Answers: Self Assessment
1. (b) 2. (c) 3. (d) 4. (b) 5. (b)
6. (b) 7. (a) 8. (b) 9. (d) 10. (b)
11. (b) 12. (a) 13. (d) 14. (d) 15. (c).

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