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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.
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).