Ode on a Grecian Urn Summary and Analysis
About “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
The Ode on a Grecian Urn was composed in the
spring of 1819 and published in 1820. The Greek vase which inspired Keats was
no figment of his imagination, but has a real existence. This vase is still
preserved in the garden at Holland House, Kensington. It is also likely that
the inspiration of this poem might have been partly derived from the Elgin
Marbles (large collections of old Greek sculptures brought to England by Lord
Elgin, a British general and ambassador. They are now in the British Museum).
Mr. A. S. Murray in a letter to Mr. Arnold has further suggested that Keats
obtained his knowledge of the urn from Piranesi's work (Vol. XIII, published
1750) which gives an engraving of it.
Ode on a Grecian Urn Summary
#Stanza 1
The poet sees a Grecian urn which has not
been affected by the onslaught of time and has been lying silently on the lap
of time. The urn gives the record of a past age more graphically than poetry.
Its borders are encircled with garlands of leaves. The poet asks whether the
figures depicted on the urn are of gods or men or both, whether they are from
Tempe or Arcadia, who the maidens trying to escape the pursuit of mad lovers
and the musicians playing on pipes and timbrels are.
#Stanza 2
The music that is listened to by the spirit
is sweeter than the music heard by physical or "sensual" ears. The
youth represented on the urn as playing on the pipe will always go on playing
under the tree which will never shed their leaves. And the lover who is hotly
pursuing the girl will never succeed in catching and kissing her. But he need
not be sad, because he will never cease to love her and his beloved will always
be lovely.
#Stanza 3
The trees sculptured on the urn will ever
remain in their spring freshness and the musician will always continue to pipe
new songs without being tired. The warmth of the young man's love will never
cool down.
#Stanza 4
The poet sees a sacrificial procession
depicted on the um. There is a crowd of people; a priest is leading á heifer
decorated with garlands to the sacrificial altar. The crowd might have come out
of some town situated by a river, or on the seashore or on a mountain. The town
must have been empty at the time, and it must ever remain empty.
#Stanza 5
The urn is a genuine specimen of Greek art
sculpturing a number of men and maidens, branches and weeds. It seduces us from
the ordinary life of thought into the extraordinary life of the imagination. It
will continue to exist, even when the present generation will die out, and in
the midst of sufferings as yet unknown to us, it will teach us the lesson that
beauty and truth are identical the only lesson we ought to know.
Ode on a Grecian Analyses
The Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of the
greatest odes of Keats and shows his poetic genius at its maturity.
The Ode on a Grecian Urn has a neat perfect
and organic structure. It has clear-cut three parts: introduction, main subject
and conclusion, corresponding to what Aristotle calls a beginning, a middle and
an end. The first stanza gives the introduction, the second, third and fourth
stanzas the main subject, and the fifth the conclusion.
The introduction presents the urn in its
mystery and shows what questions it poses to the poet. The main subject
consists of the scenes on the urn as Keats sees them with an imaginative
insight into the relation between art and life. The conclusion answers the
questions posed in the introduction and announces the message of the urn to
mankind.
The Ode is a representative poem of Keats. It
illustrates all the essential features of Keats's poetry-his Hellenism, his
concept of beauty, his sensuousness,
his meditativeness, his felicity of expression.
Hellenism is
one of the most remarkable features of Keats's poetry. The Greek spirit was
re-incarnated in him so much so that Shelley was impelled to say, "He was
a Greek!" The Ode on a Grecian Urn
reveals his Hellenism most fully. The subject is an urn, a relic of ancient
Greek sculpture. The urn is embossed with the human figures marked by the
animal vitality of the ancient Greeks and with scenes that vividly reproduce
the ancient Hellenic life with its religious rituals and animating faith. The “little
town by river or sea-shore or mountain-built with peaceful citadel" is as
Greek a thing as anything in Homer or Theocritus. The Greek sense of beauty and
Greek sensuousness mark the Ode.
His Hellenism also
consists in the directness and lucidity of expression and concreteness of
imageries which raise the description to vivid reality ("that heifer
lowing at the skies", the little town....emptied of its folk") J. H.
Fowler rightly observes, ".... no one more truly has vivified, whilst idealizing, the picture of Greek country life in the fancied Golden Age than
Keats in these lovely....stanzas."
Despite all his Hellenism Keats is essentially romantic. In this Ode he escapes into the world of art which has caught the ancient Greek life in its unfading, imperishable beauty.
Keats's
sensuousness is in evidence in the descriptions of the sculptured scenes.
The mad pursuit of maidens, the struggle of maidens to escape being kissed by
bold lovers, the wild ecstasy of impassioned youths, the melodist playing
on "soft" pipe beneath the trees full of green leaves, the heifer
lowing at the skies with "all her silken flanks with garlands drest"
etc.-all these feast our senses with sweet pleasure.
Keats's poems,
specially his Odes are not only sensuous, but also reflective. And in the Grecian
Ode the reflective element predominates over the sensuous. In his
discussion of the advantage possessed by plastic art over human life in the
element of permanence (Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter)
Keats enters the realm of metaphysics, while in the celebrated words which
close the Ode he treats the great ethical question of Summum Bonum of human existence as consisting in a knowledge of the
equivalence of Beauty and Truth.
The Ode falsifies
Keats's famous suggestion, "O for a life of sensation rather than of
thought." Dr. Srikumar Banerjee rightly says: "The Nightingale Ode is a poem of rich sensuousness....., the
Grecian Ode is a predominantly reflective poem in which the poet explores the
interspaces of silence that surround an incomplete drama of human life."
The personal emotion is almost absent in this poem, the only personal touch
being the reference to the satiety and pain attendant on earthly love.
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