IT IS THE CLEAR DESCRIPTION ABOUT THE POEM ODE ON A GRECIAN URN BY JOHN KEATS.

1. Ode on a Grecian Urn
By: John Keats

2. About Keats
• Keats was of melancholic temperament which was
brought about by his experiences of human suffering
as “dresser” at Guy Hospital and his own personal
losses and deaths in family.
• He died at the age of 25, had only 54 poems
published out of 150 poems that he wrote.
• His poetry is characterized by sensual imagery
especially in the odes.

3. • Major themes in his works are: transience of life &
the inevitability of death, contemplation of Beauty,
Hellenism, reverie & getting lost in the ideal world,
his negative capability, sensuous imagery &
permanence of art.
• He had plans of poetic achievement but his dream
was always interrupted by thoughts of approaching
death.
• In many of his poems the speaker leaves the real
world to explore a mythical or aesthetic realm and
returns at the end with better understanding.

4. Negative Capability
• The ability to get lost in a reverie, to leave conscious
life for imaginative life without wondering about
rationality is Keats’ concept of negative capability.
• The poet gives up his personal identity to focus on
object being described, so the object becomes
symbolic of intense emotions and only that emotion
is important.
• Keats rejected the artist’s attempt to analyze,
rationalize, or categorize the world – to pass
judgments.

5. Negative Capability…
• Also described as ‘aesthetic objectivity’ – Keats’ theory of
“negative capability” is concerned with particular state of
poetic receptivity that makes literary creation possible.
• In a letter to his brother George in Dec 1817, he
contends: ‘the excellence of every Art is its intensity,
capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their
being in close relationship with beauty & truth…I mean
Negative Capability, that is when man is capable of being
in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact & reason…with a great poet the sense
of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather
obliterates all consideration.’

6. Negative Capability…
• Therefore, Keats’ theory breaks down as the following:
 Imagination communicates an intense emotion.
 The poet gives up personal identity to focus on the object
being described.
 As a result, the object becomes symbolic of these intense
emotions.
 And all other matters not important to this emotion are
sidelined.
 The poem’s beauty/truth are combination of poetic
emotion and perceived object.
 The poem thus is a subjective truth.

7. About the Ode
• For Keats therefore, the urn in “Ode to a Grecian
Urn” is an object that speaks a truth and a beauty,
but that truth and beauty are understood by the
negative capability of the artist.
• The urn’s message of beauty and truth, thus is open-
ended and mysterious.
• The ode contains the most discussed two lines of all
of Keats’ poetry – “Beauty is truth, truth beauty-that
is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

8. About the Ode…
• It is the third of the five great odes of 1819, which
are generally believed to have been written in the
following order – Psyche, Nightingale, Grecian Urn,
Melancholy, and Autumn.
• He conveys his philosophy about art, beauty and
love.
• Written in ten line stanzas in iambic pentameter with
a rhyme scheme of abab cde cde, and is thus
Horatian (ode with one stanza type).

9. Stanza 1
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Poet addresses the urn, he is preoccupied with the
pictures on the urn.
He imagines a permanent state of unconsumed
passion.
Unravished bride of quiteness: a new bride
Foster child of silence & slow time: sense of
timelessness & frozen time

10. Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
Sylvan historian: is a bearer of history, can tell a story
Our rhyme: our poem or song

11. What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
The urn is decorated with vines covered in leaves,
hence the story of the urn is hidden behind the
curtain of leaves.
Tale is about gods or humans or both.
Tempe or Arcady: valley in Greece

12. What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Describes different scenes etched on the urn.
Loth: loath
Timbrels: small drums
Pipes: flute
Wild ecstasy: extreme emotion of joy and complete
surrender to the state

13. Stanza 2
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
The unheard songs are sweeter because they are
unaffected by time,
The musicians playing flute are asked to play on since
their music is for the soul.

14. Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Sensual ear: physical ear
Endear’d: loved
Pipe : play on
Ditties: short songs

15. Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
A young lad lying under the tree is singing for his
beloved and must go on singing.
The trees above will never experience autumn and
death.

16. Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
The lover attempting to kiss his beloved will never be
able to do so.
His love forever will remain unfulfilled.

17. She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Tells the beloved to take strength from the fact that she
will always be there beside him, though his love
never consumed.
She will always remain beautiful and you will always
love her.

18. Stanza 3
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
The branches will forever be green.
Keats envies them their lasting happiness and fertility
and beauty.

19. And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
The musician will never stop playing and his songs will
always be new for new generations of humans.
It stays forever while a generation of humans is
replaced by another, so in this way the beauty or
music of the urn stays fresh and ‘forever new.’

20. More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
Love is always happy and never changing.

21. All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
The love of the world of mortals is inconsistent and
short-lived and dies too soon.

22. Stanza 4
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Scene of sacrfice and offering at the altar – a religious
ceremony.

23. Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
A young ram being led to the altar for sacrifice.
The body is covered and decorated with flowers, as is
done with sacrificial animals.

24. What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
Picture of a deserted village – people may have gone
for sacrifice
Citadel: fortress
Pious morn: holy morning

25. 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 picture of silence will never change, the village
never be full of people, they will never return to tell
their tales.
The desolate village will remain desolate – sense of
deep meditation

26. Stanza 5
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Shape in ancient Greek city, Attica.
Fair attitude: abstract form
Brede: braid, interwoven design
Overwrought: decorated

27. Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
Silent form: reminder of ‘bride of quiteness’
Tease us out of thought: baffle us, confuse us
The silence of the urn leads man to thoughts of
‘eternity’ or life after death, and hence Keats calls it
‘cold pastoral’.
The urn is unconcerned with the plight of
humans/mortals .

28. When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
The urn induces deep thoughts of the fate of mankind:
the ultimate death and replacement of one
generation with another.
But the poet feels that the urn will keep giving lessons
to all generations of mankind.

29. "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
This, in the words of Keats, is the message of the urn to
all generations of mankind.
That beauty and truth cannot be separated, in the
words of Emily Legouis “ beauty is the only higher
truth,”