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Ode to a Grecian Urn

Reading:
The narrator is describing images on a Grecian urn. The speakers imagination is
allowing him to experience that world.
Ideas:
Immortality of the images of the urn.
the urn is inanimate, the images on the urn will never change and will be
experienced through generations.
In turn the people depicted in the images on the urn will also be immortal- frozen in
those moments. For example, the lovers on the urn will never kiss but Keats sees this
as a positive because, forever wilt thou love, and she be fair.
this is positive as the lovers will always be in a state of anticipation.
Power of imagination
the urn is kept alive and immortal through the power of imagination,
interpretation and experience through the images on the urn e.g. heard melodies
are sweet but unheard melodies are sweeter, therefore, ye pipes play on. This
paradox highlights the idea that each person who looks at the urn will use their
imagination to hear the tune they want to, therefore having a unique experience.

Images and Symbols:


Description of the urn still unravished bride of quietness, the foster-child of
silence and slow time.
The trees will always be in full bloom and will never pass into another season: Your
leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu.
The piper on the urns are always playing music but the songs are always new
because it depends on the imagination of the viewer: Forever piping songs forever
new.
Sacrifice of the cow: Why thou art desolate, can eer return.
The speaker imagines the urn speaking its message to mankind Beauty is truth,
truth beauty.
The conclusion which no one can say for sure who speaks, that is all / ye know on
earth, and all ye need to know. It could be the speaker addressing the urn, and it
could be the urn addressing mankind. If it is the speaker addressing the urn, then it
would seem to indicate his awareness of its limitations: The urn may not need to
know anything beyond the equation of beauty and truth. If it is the urn addressing
mankind, then the phrase has the weight of an important lesson, as though beyond
all the complications of human life, all human beings need to know on earth is that
beauty and truth are one and the same. It is a matter of personal interpretation as to
who said it. This can be used as a technique of allusions.
Techniques:
Personification: thou still unravished bride or quietness
Technique of archaic speech: garlands drest peaceful citadel. Doth eternity: cold
pastoral.
Rhyming: maidens overwrought. Dost tease us out of thought and other woe.
Need to know and this generation waste whom thou sayst.
Metaphor: Sylvan historian, who canst thus express, a flowery tale more sweetly
than our rhyme compares the urn to story told by a historian.

In the first stanza the speaker asks the urn six question e.g. What men or gods are
these? What maidens loth? What struggle to escape? As the urn can never tell
him the whos, whats, whens and wheres of the stories it depict it leaves the
audience asking the same rhetorical questions and leaving us intrigued.
Emotions: a mix of sadness, interest and longing (for beauty, love and something
lasting).

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