'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is one of the all-time-known and most widely analysed poems past John Keats (1795-1821); information technology is besides, perhaps, the nigh famous of his five Odes which he composed in 1819, although 'To Autumn' gives it a run for its coin. The best way to analyse 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is past going through the poem with a stanza-by-stanza summary; as we become, we'll offer an analysis of some of the nearly important features of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'.

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow fourth dimension,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts near thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Keats begins past looking at the ancient Greek urn, and trying to figure out who the people are who are depicted on the outside of it. (A 'timbrel' is a kind of tambourine; 'Tempe', or the Vale of Tempe, was a favourite haunt of the Muses in Greek mythology. 'Arcady' is another name for Arcadia, a beautiful unspoilt wilderness in ancient Greece.) Keats emphasises the 'quietness' or silence of the urn: information technology cannot explain the significant of the figures that appear on it, and is silent about them, and who created them.

Heard melodies are sweet, only those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more than endear'd,
Piping to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the copse, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast non thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Keats acknowledges that although he cannot hear the pipes and timbrels (depicted on the urn) existence played, this really makes their (imagined) sound even 'sweeter' to the ear. Their 'spirit ditties' which Keats imagines the pipers on the urn playing are more than powerful than any actual music (heard by the ear) could exist. In this world depicted on the urn, the copse will never lose their leaves, nor volition the piper ever leave off playing.

The lover who is trying to woo a adult female volition never get to buss her (because they are both frozen in time, with him 'winning near the goal' only non quite getting what he wants); but he shouldn't grieve over this, considering she will always be fair and young, and he will always love her, equally they are frozen in this item moment. (There's also a point here nearly the desire for someone being more delicious than the experience of winning them ever can exist, because, equally Jacques Lacan well understood, every bit soon as you go what you desire yous finish to desire it.)

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For e'er piping songs for ever new;
More than happy love! more happy, happy love!
For e'er warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human being passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning brow, and a parching tongue.

Keats at present praises the boughs of the trees carved into the urn, because their leaves will never fall, nor will it ever cease to be leap in the earth depicted on the Grecian urn. The 'melodist' who plays the music will always exist piping; and the lover pursuing the girl will continue to be happy in his love, because information technology is 'notwithstanding to be relish'd'.

Annotation the ambiguity of this phrase: 'still to be enjoy'd' suggests both 'the enjoyment lasting forever' and 'the enjoyment [i.e. the gratification] notwithstanding lying alee in the futurity, not nevertheless satisfied or achieved'.

But of course the word 'however' likewise conveys the static nature of the scene: the figures are frozen in time. Once again, Keats emphasises that the anticipation of beloved is more exciting and enjoyable than the having. Keats then reminds us that pining abroad for love leads to a feverish state where the sufferer feels sick, with a 'burning forehead' and 'parching tongue'.

This puts the dampener on the idea of this existence a 'happy' scene, until we recall that, because the lover is fixed in the delightful moment of falling in beloved, he hasn't still suffered the later on-pangs of pining abroad with unrequited dearest; that comes adjacent. But it won't come next for this lover, considering he volition forever remain as he is on the Grecian urn.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Atomic number 82'st g that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What trivial boondocks by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, tin can eastward'er render.

The swerve at the outset of the fourth stanza of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' – with Keats posing several questions – indicates that Keats has turned the Grecian urn round, and is at present viewing another moving-picture show depicted on it. Some people are coming to a cede at an chantry fashioned from nature ('green altar'), to which a 'mysterious priest' is leading a cow that is mooing at the heavens.

The cow or 'heifer' is dressed in garlands ready to be killed before the gods. Keats wonders which 'petty town' in aboriginal Greece is being shown here, with all of its citizens turned out for the anniversary.

Once more, every bit in the offset stanza of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', Keats reminds us (and himself) that he will never acquire the respond to these questions, because the townsfolk are all expressionless and will remain silent. And the Grecian urn, as well, volition not offer upwardly the answers.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With woods branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease united states out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When one-time age shall this generation waste matter,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on globe, and all ye need to know.'

We at present come to the final stanza of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'. John Keats praises the beauty of the Grecian urn as a whole, celebrating its 'Attic shape' (i.e. its Athenian form, every bit it's an ancient Greek or 'Grecian' urn) and its 'Fair mental attitude'. Keats praises the 'brede' of 'marble men and maidens overwrought' ('brede' is an old word referring to plaiting or embroidery, although given the run-on line or enjambment leading us into 'Of marble men', at that place'south probably an intended pun on breed of men; similarly, the maidens are 'overwrought' because they take been carved over the men, although there'due south maybe also a secondary suggestion that the maidens are being emotionally strained).

Over again, Keats draws attention to the 'silent' nature of the Grecian urn as a piece of work of art. Keats says that the urn 'doth tease united states of america out of idea', i.due east. presents us with teasing riddles (who are these people, and what are they doing?) without providing the states with the answers. We are thus teased 'out of thought', out of our minds. He seems to go frustrated with the urn for being so mysterious and suggestive; for Keats, the Grecian urn is 'Cold Pastoral', a phrase which suggests the urn has qualities of the pastoral (i.e. art representing the countryside, usually in an idealised form) simply information technology is cold pastoral, because it raises more questions than it provides answers to.

But in the final lines of the poem, we come to realise that Keats appears to approve of this quality of the urn: information technology provides it with its timeless wonder and power. When Keats and his generation are all long dead, this Grecian urn volition remain for future generations who experience similar woes to Keats, and the urn will be 'a friend to man', a alleviation.

And finally, in the final two lines of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', the urn 'speaks' – Keats sums up the bulletin of this timeless work of art as:

'Beauty is truth, truth dazzler,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.'

In other words, beauty is all nosotros need in order to discover truth, and truth is itself beautiful. This is all we, are mortals, know, but it'due south all we need to know: nosotros shouldn't impatiently go in pursuit of answers which nosotros don't need to have. Implied in these concluding lines of Keats'southward poem is the proffer that nosotros shouldn't endeavour to find physical answers to everything; sometimes the mystery is enough.

Some critics have suggested that these last two lines of Keats'due south poem are ironic: they are, after all, spoken not by Keats himself (or by his speaker) simply past the urn, to which Keats has attributed them. In such an interpretation of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', and then, Keats is dissatisfied with the 'Cold Pastoral' of the urn which smilingly sits there, with its pretty pictures, and says, 'Dazzler is truth, truth is beauty, and that's all you're getting. Like it or lump information technology.' (Nosotros're paraphrasing, of grade.)

In such a reading of the poem, Keats is pouring scorn on the urn for beingness and so tight-lipped, so smugly and wilfully 'silent', in its refusal to tell more about the history and culture it depicts. Is Keats, and so, bemoaning the limits of fine art, lamenting the fact that it offers only partial 'messages' and doesn't provide u.s. with wholesale meaning?

This reading seems unlikely, equally we tin run across if nosotros turn to Keats's beliefs well-nigh art, expressed elsewhere in his letters. 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is a fine poetic instance of Keats's theory of 'Negative Capability', a concept he outlined, and defined, in a letter of December 1817:

several things dovetailed in my mind, & at once it struck me, what quality went to form a Man of Accomplishment especially in Literature & which Shakespeare possessed and then enormously – I mean Negative Capability, that is when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, Mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching afterwards fact & reason – Coleridge, for instance, would let go past a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from existence incapable of remaining content with one-half noesis.

Keats'southward Negative Capability is axiomatic in 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' in the 'mysterious' nature of the urn, which offers the viewer fractional glimpses and hints of a long-vanished civilisation. But Keats doesn't seem to detect this a bad matter. Indeed, he reminds united states that imagined melodies are sweeter than those which nosotros physically hear, which rarely live upwardly to our expectations.

Similarly, the desire and anticipation felt past the young lover seeking to woo his sweetheart outdoes whatsoever romantic or sexual gratification he might win. In other words, Keats liked the fact that not all facts are readily available to usa. Elsewhere, in his long narrative verse form 'Lamia', he criticised scientific discipline for removing the mystery of the rainbow (he's thinking specifically of Isaac Newton's work unravelling the structure of the colour spectrum):

Philosophy will clip an Angel'southward wings,
Conquer all mysteries past rule and line,
Empty the haunted air, and gnomèd mine –
Unweave a rainbow, as it erewhile made
The tender-person'd Lamia melt into a shade

So if those final ii lines of 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' are ironic, it'southward because they are too glib a summary of the urn's worth and pregnant; not because Keats dislikes art's reluctance to offer upward wholesale meanings, facts, or philosophical solutions.

'Ode on a Grecian Urn' is arranged into five 10-line stanzas, rhymed ababcdedce. The metre is iambic pentameter, with some variations: discover, for instance, the trochaic substitution at the beginning of the penultimate line, where 'Beau-ty' lends the urn's 'pronouncement' a bold, strong air.

Image: via Wikimedia Commons.