EXTRACTS 7 - John Keats

O D E ON A G R E C I A N U R N / 905
As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

75 Adieu! adieu! thy plaintive anthem fades 0 hymn
Past the near meadows, over the still stream,
Up the hill-side; and now 'tis buried deep
In the next valley-glades:
Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
so Fled is that music:—Do I wake or sleep?
May 1819 1819
Ode on a Grecian Urn 1
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
2
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

5 What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? 3
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
10 What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
2
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
4
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

15 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,
20 For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
3
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
1. Another poem that Keats published in Hay- ing phrase: is "still" an adverb ("as yet"), or is it an
don's Annals of the Fine Arts. This urn, with its adjective ("motionless"), as the punctuation of the
sculptured reliefs of revelry and panting young lov- Annals version, which adds a comma after "still,"
ers in chase and in flight, of a pastoral piper under suggests? And the two concluding lines have accu-
spring foliage, and of the quiet procession of priest mulated as much critical discussion as the "two-
and townspeople, resembles parts of various vases, handed engine" in Milton's "Lycidas" or the most
sculptures, and paintings, but it existed in all its difficult cruxes in Shakespeare's plays.
particulars only in Keats's imagination. In the urn— 2. Rustic, representing a woodland scene.
which captures moments of intense experience in 3. The valleys of Arcadia, a state in ancient Greece
attitudes of grace and immobilizes them in mar- often used as a symbol of the pastoral ideal.
ble—Keats found the perfect correlative for his "Tempe": a beautiful valley in Greece that has
concern with the longing for permanence in a come to represent rural beauty.
world of change. The interpretation of the details 4. The ear of sense (as opposed to that of the
with which he develops this concept, however, is "spirit," or imagination).
hotly disputed. The disputes begin with the open-
906 / JOHN KEATS
For ever piping songs for ever new;

25 More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
30 A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
4
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
35 What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
40 Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
5
O Attic5 shape! Fair attitude!6 with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,7
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
45 As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," 8 —that is all
50 Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
1819 1820
o d e on Melancholy T h i s is K e a t s ' s b e s t - k n o w n s t a t e m e n t o f his r e c u r r e n t

t h e m e o f t h e m i n g l e d c o n t r a r i e t i e s o f life. T h e r e m a r k a b l e last stanza, i n w h i c h M e l -
a n c h o l y b e c o m e s a veiled goddess worshiped in s e c r e t religious rites, implies that it
is t h e tragic h u m a n destiny that b e a u t y , joy, a n d life itself owe n o t only t h e i r quality
but their value to the fact that they are transitory and turn into their opposites.
Melancholy—a synonym for depression, involving a paralyzing self-consciousness
e n g e n d e r e d by an e x c e s s of t h o u g h t — i s a highly literary and even bookish ailment,
a s K e a t s k n e w . S h a k e s p e a r e ' s H a m l e t a n d M i l t o n ' s s p e a k e r i n "II P e n s e r o s o " are t h e
5. Greek. Attica was the region of Greece in which Keats's friends. This discrepancy has multiplied
Athens was located. the diversity of critical interpretations of the last
6. Probably used in its early, technical sense: the two lines. Critics disagree whether the whole of
pose struck by a figure in statuary or painting. these lines is said by the urn, or "Beauty is truth,
7. Ornamented ail over ("overwrought") with an truth beauty" by the urn and the rest by the lyric
interwoven pattern ("brede"). The adjective "over- speaker; whether the "ye" in the last line is
wrought" might also modify "maidens" and even addressed to the lyric speaker, to the readers, to
"men" and so hint at the emotional anguish of the the urn, or to the figures on the urn; whether "all
figures portrayed on the urn. ye know" is that beauty is truth, or this plus the
8. The quotation marks around this phrase are statement in lines 4 6 ^ * 8 ; and whether "beauty is
found in the volume of poems Keats published in truth" is a profound metaphysical proposition, an
1820, but there are no quotation marks in the ver- overstatement representing the limited point of
sion printed in Annals of the Fine Arts that same view of the urn, or simply nonsensical.
year or in the transcripts of the poem made by

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O D E ON A G R E C I A N U R N / 905

As she is fam'd to do, deceiving elf.

Ode on a Grecian Urn 1

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

For ever piping songs for ever new;

o d e on Melancholy T h i s is K e a t s ' s b e s t - k n o w n s t a t e m e n t o f his r e c u r r e n t

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