ODE ON A GRECIAN URN ; STANZAS

FIRST STANZA

Why is the urn compared to a ” still unravish’d bride”?

• "still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.
• "unravish’d" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time, its always the same, it doesn’t age => agelesness

Explain the term “sylvan (of the forest) historian”(l.3)

• The urn is a “Sylvan historian” because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.
• Is it paradoxical that the urn, a “bride of quietness”, can tell its stories “more sweetly than our rhyme” (meaning the poem itself)?
• The gentleness of the term “sylvan historian” and his “flowery tale” told “sweetly” do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)

What change in viewpoint occurs in lines 8-10?

• The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience’s relationship with “Art” in general… He gets excited as he becomes a more active participant in events of the urn ,  excitement is created by the short questions which add the pace of the last lines

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, 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 not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

SECOND STANZA

In lines 1-4 I contrast the ideal (in art, love, and nature) and the real - the “heard melodies”; which does my speaker seem to prefer at this point? How can you tell?

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,

       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about 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?

-         Contrast

“Heard melodies are sweet but those unheard are sweeter”. In this line I believe  this line its related to the desire of what one never had. Those unheard and imaginated melodies have something that was never listened, therefore are sweeter and more special. He establishes a difference between the shallow melodies and the ones that go beyond that and have a more profund meaning. He seems to believe that real tunes, and intresting melodies are not heard by humans,  but the ones humans can imagine go beyond that and can be related with the celestial “spirit ditties”. He lets his imagination flow and bases his story or unheard melody in the drawings depicted in the urn. PARADOX: There are different things represented in the urn, but this representations are more real and have more importance in the imagination than in real life.He is amazed with how the urn stimulasted his mind and imagination.

Is the idea of unheard pipes an oxymoron?

• Oxymoron: a statement with two parts which seem contradictory; examples: sad joy, a wise fool, the sound of silence, or Hamlet's saying, "I must be cruel only to be kind"

This is an oxymoron as the ideas are opposed contrasting reality vs imagination. First creating a difference in the creation of sound and the unheard pipes. This creates and ambivlanece between reality and mind.

In lines 5-10 we begin to sense a negative undercurrent to the ideal, to frozen time. How do I use language to help convey this negativity?

His negativity reflects his problems with love in his own life, in the poem the fact that he cannot see another person happy because of love, its clearly represented.

The general idea of the poem seems to be positive but the words he chooses to use have a negative connotation.

The last six lines contrast the drawback of frozen time; note the negative phrasing: "canst not leave," "nor ever can," "never, never canst" in lines 5-8. Keats says not to grieve; whom he is addressing- Then he lists the advantages of frozen time; however, Keats continues to use negative phrasing even in these lines: "do not grieve," "cannot fade," and ""hast not thy bliss." Keats may have done this withought any intention, or there may be a reason for this negative undertone.