Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Urn Line
Urn Line
Title:
On a Grecian Urn means to or about a Greek urn. The urn is addressed (= talked to).
Talking to a thing is a thing that poets do in odes. (You will see that In this ode, the poet
also addresses the things he sees on the urn.)
The urn is the virgin (“unravished” means she has not been touched) bride of quietness. A
bride is a woman who gets married. In this case the vase is the bride of quiet.
The urn is also the foster-child (= not a biological child but one that is taken care of by
someone else than its parent) of Silence and Time. Usually time is fast, but here not, because
we are talking about an urn which is not alive, so time passes slowly for it.
Sylvan (or sylvian) means of the woods. The word has a pleasant, peaceful connotation. So
sylvan historian means the maker of the urn who presents a pleasant scene in the woods.
Maybe one such as this:
Nymphs and Satyrs by Peter Paul Rubens
What legend (= old story) framed with leaves can be found around your shape (= the urn). 5
Deities are gods, and mortals are humans (mortal comes from the French mort = dead.)
A maiden is an old word for girl. Loth means not willing (the girls don’t want to). What don’t the
girls want? Well, probably to be kissed or more than that.
Mad pursuit may refer to a classic scene where fauns who are always horny pursue (pursuit is
the noun, and pursue means chase) the girls or nymphs. The nymphs/girls then struggle (fight)
to escape the men’s grabbing arms.
The music is played and the people or gods in the picture are going wild. They’re ecstatic.
They’re probably dancing wildly. You get the idea.
Stanza 2:
Line 11: Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Line 12: Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
This stanza speaks of things that are not in the scene on the urn. When we look at the urn, we
might hear music in our imagination, but that music isn’t really there. The speaker of the poem
draws our attention to this, and he says the music that you can’t actually hear, that imaginary
music, is actually better than real music. Quite an interesting statement to make. Do you agree
with the poet?
The pipes (= flutes) in the picture on the urn play not to our physical (“sensual”) ears, but to the
ears of our imagination. And these are better loved (“more endear’d), or at least the speaker of
the poem thinks so, than our real ears.
Line 15: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Line 16: Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
These lines and the ones until the end of the stanza teach us another aspect of art. Visual art
captures only one moment, and makes it eternal. The youth are always under the trees. Fair
means beautiful. The people are in the scene are always hearing the same song. The trees will
never lose their leaves.
But the lover still has won a few points. He doesn’t need to be sad.
Line 19: She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
The woman he wants will not fade = she will not grow ugly and old. On the other hand, he will
never be happy,
Line 20: For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Stanza 3:
Line 21: Ah, happy happy boughs! that cannot shed
Line 22: Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
Boughs are branches of a tree. The branches will never lose (“shed”) their leaves. We knew
that already. They never bid the Spring adieu = they never say goodbye to spring. It’s always
spring.
The happy musician, unwearied (= not tired), is forever playing his flute songs that are also
forever new.
The word “happy” is overused a little bit in these lines, don’t you think? Does the poet really
think that the creatures on the urn are happy? What do you think? I’m beginning to doubt it.
Anyway, everything looks good. The love is forever warm and fresh, on the point of being
enjoyed.
The lovers are forever young and out of breath with excitement.
The lovers are “above” human passion, which means they are at a distance from it; they’re at a
better place.
Human passion makes you worried and tired (cloy means wear out because something is too
sticky, too heavy, or too sweet).
Passion can make you feel ill, as if you have a fever, with your forehead burning, and your
tongue sticking in your mouth (“parching” means dried out/very thirsty).
So what have we been reading so
far?
Let’s stop to try to understand Stanza 3.
This stanza develops the thought from stanza 2 that nothing can change in the world of
the picture on the urn. It gives some more examples of that.
Then it stresses the idea that as little as human passion is not a part of the scene on the
urn, neither is human suffering “all breathing human passion far above.” Passion and
suffering go together, is the idea here, and art is clean of that. Or at least the
conventional art in Keats’ time was.
Some people are coming to a sacrifice = event of animal burning as offer to the gods.
Altar = the high place where offerings are made to the gods.
The priest is leading a young cow (“heifer) to be sacrificed. The cow is lowing =
mooing.
Line 34: And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
Drest = dressed. The cow’s legs (“flanks”) are decorated with flower chains.
A citadel is a fort. The people in the scene on the urn are imagined to be from a little
town.
The people in the scene are on their way to the sacrifice, so their town will forever be
empty and silent. No one (“not a soul”) will ever come back to explain what the reason
is the town is empty.
Again it’s an example of how the scene on the urn is frozen in time, and is devoid (=
empty) of humanity and life.
Stanza 5:
Line 41: O Attic shape! fair attitude! with brede
Attic means from Athens, the capital of Greece. “Brede” is an interwoven pattern, like a
braid but here it’s in marble. The urn is decorated with marble men and women
Line 43: With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou = you. The poet is talking to the urn again. The quiet urn which doesn’t speak
challenges our thoughts
As much as eternity = endless time. Pastoral = the sweet, peaceful country life.
The speaker calls the scene on the urn cold and not sweet, so cold pastoral is a
paradox.
We’ve already discussed why the scene is cold. No real passion is going on; the
scenes on the urn are frozen. But they may look sweet and attractive.
When people who live now will grow old and die,
You (the urn) will stay, in the middle of all kinds of trouble
That is not ours. You’ll be a friend to man, to whom you will say:
The rest of the closing lines may be said by the speaker of the poem.
But I must say that quotation marks around the whole last lines seem more logical.
The speaker wouldn’t say “That is all you know on earth,” as if he himself weren’t a
human being who lives on earth. So more likely this is said by the urn.
It’s clear to me that the ode tries to answer the question why we need art. It’s a great
exploration of this question.
But I don’t feel there is a clear answer. The urn is a “friend of man,” because it is
always with us, and it gives us pleasure and beauty when we watch it.
But why it is important to us, or how beauty can be truth and truth beauty, sorry, wasn’t
clear to me. I certainly don’t know how to answer that question just by reading the
poem.