Ode on a Grecian Urn
by John Keats
Analysis
‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ has a specific
structure. It is split into five stanzas of ten lines each, with fairly rigid
iambic pentameter.
The rhyme scheme is split into two
parts, 7 and 3. The final three lines of each stanza vary slightly. For the
first seven lines, a rhyme scheme of ABABCDE is used. In first stanza, the
final three lines are DCE; in the second one, they’re CED; stanzas three and
four both use CDE, while the fifth and final stanza uses DCE. This gives the
piece a ponderous feel, adding a sense of deliberation to the final lines of
each verse while still adhering to the form.
In the first stanza a very old urn from
Greece is the subject of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, so all of the ideas and
thoughts are addressed towards it. On the urn, there are images of people who
have been frozen in place for all of time, as the “foster-child of silence and
slow time.”
The narrator is wondering just what
legend or story the figures stuck on the pottery are trying to convey. One
picture is showing a gang of men, chasing some women, but he wants to know more
about the “struggle to escape” or the “wild ecstasy.” This juxtaposition between
the two ideas shows, how he projects different narratives onto one scene,
unsure of which one is true.
In the second stanza, Keats introduces another
image on the Grecian urn. In this scene, a young man is sat with a lover,
seemingly playing a song on a pipe as they are surrounded by trees. The poet
says, “heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” Unaffected
by growing old or changing fashions, the music, the poet imagines the man
playing has unlimited potential for beauty. The figures will never grow old, similarly
the music also contains an immortal quality, one much “sweeter” than regular
music. The poet says, the man will never be able to kiss his beloved, and she
will never lose her beauty as she is frozen in time.
The third stanza again focuses on the
same two lovers but turns its attention to the rest of the scene. The trees
behind the pipe player will never shed their leaves. Just like the leaves, the
love between the two lovers, is equally as immortal and won’t have the chance
to grow old and stale. Normal love between humans can languish into a
“breathing human passion” and becomes a “burning forehead and a parching
tongue,” a problem that the young lovers will not face. This love, he believes,
is “far above” the standard human bond, which grows tired and weary.
The parched tongue indicates that the
poet is worried about the flame of passion diminishing as time passes. On
viewing the lovers, the narrator is reminded of the inevitability of his own
diminishing passions and regrets that he doesn’t have the same chance of immortality
as the two lovers on the urn have.
In the fourth stanza of ‘Ode on a
Grecian Urn’, a group of people is seen bringing a cow to be sacrificed, the
narrator begins to wonder about the individuals’ lives. The poet imagines the
“little town” they come from, now deserted because its inhabitants are frozen
in the image, on the urn “for evermore.”
In the final stanza, Keats talks
directly to the urn itself, which he believes “doth tease us out of thought.”
Even after everyone has died, the urn will remain. The urn teases the poet with
its immortal existence. The urn has its own little world, living by its own
rules. It’s an aesthetic piece of art, something mysterious, when compared to
the everyday human life.
The last lines in the poem sum up, the
entire process of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ in one couplet. “Beauty is truth,
truth beauty—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." It’s
unclear who spoke the lines, the urn, or Keats himself.
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