Ode on a Grecian Urn

To make this challenging poem more accessible link it to two other pieces of art. First compare the theme of frozen but endless youth in the poem to an alternate version of this theme in the rock song “Celluloid Heroes” by the Kinks. The final lines are:

Celluloid heroes never feel any pain

And celluloid heroes never really die.

After reading Keats’s poem, watch the Youtube video of this song at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zL0cG7a2PW0 

Like the Ode, the Kinks’ song simultaneously celebrates and grieves for eternal youth. In the Ode, lovers never age and trees never shed their bloom; similarly every time we pop in a DVD from an earlier generation, the stars are young and vibrant again. Keats’s theme can be linked to any stars who died young like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, River Phoenix, Heath Ledger, and Brittany Murphy, or stars who are best known for films they made in their youth. Also this theme can be linked to rock and rap legends like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur and Amy Winehouse, all of whom died at age 27 except Tupac who was just 25.

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, or ever bid the Spring adieu.

In the movies or on their cds, these stars cannot shed their figurative “leaves” and reach the autumn of human life. They are like the “marble men and maidens” on Keats’s Greek urn and will never “bid the Spring adieu.”

Secondly, let’s compare the penultimate (second last) verse of the Ode to the relief on a sacrificial altar at the Temple of Vespasian in ancient Pompeii (shown above), the city that was destroyed by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Like Keats’s urn, the Pompeii relief depicts citizens and a priest leading a heifer to a sacrifice. Like the “little town” in the vase scene, Pompeii is  stuck or frozen in time. Bread left in the oven 2000 years ago when the volcano erupted is still in tact and in the ovens of Pompeii. The city looks and feels like a stopped clock, waiting to be rewound so it can spring back to life.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies…

*                      *                      *

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate can e’er return.

Although we’re mixing Greek and Roman history here, the Pompeii connection is visceral and immediate, and the strange fate of that ancient city is eerily analogous to Keats’s vase scene. The streets of Pompeii will be silent forever. None of its citizens can ever return to recount the day of destruction – when Vesuvius erupted (although archaeologists, historians, writers, and filmmakers have reconstructed that day for us). 

Next identify opposites and contrasts in the poem as we do in the Antigone issue:

“Still unravished bride of quietness”                                       line 1

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard              line 11

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on.”                line 12

“Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,                             line 17

Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;      line 18

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,”         line 19

“Cold Pastoral!”                                                                                        line 45

What do these contrasts have in common?  Most contain both a note of celebration and a note of grief; and the reason for celebration is also the cause of grief.

(Ex. line 1:  Because the bride is still unravished, the moment of ultimate bliss is still to come.  On the other hand, because she has lingered so long in anticipation, we know she will never win her goal.)

An analogy to music may also help you better appreciate and understand the poem.  Note the happy melody at the beginning — “What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?” — which, in a sense, runs throughout the poem. At the same time, there is a mournful bass line, barely heard at first in the midst of celebration, but quietly present nonetheless. (The sad tone is already implied in “still unravished bride). Gradually this mournful bass grows louder: “Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss”…“boughs that cannot shed your leaves”…“thy streets for evermore/Will silent be; and not a soul to tell/Why thou are desolate, can e’er return.”…“Cold pastoral!”…“Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe.” By the last verse the mournful bass line is no longer an accompaniment, but an equal contrapuntal voice contrasting with and combating the happy melody: “Thou shalt remain,” (note of celebration) “in midst of other woe” (equally dominant note of grief).  The same can be said of “Cold Pastoral!” The expression is a perfect balance of grief (“Cold”) and celebration (“Pastoral”).  Keats has made the mournful bass line grow louder and louder as the poem progresses, like a composer might do in a piece of music that gradually modulates from happy to nostalgic.

The last two lines similarly combine opposites, and they suggest a philosophy and an aesthetic.

QUESTIONS

1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Who is the “bride of quietness”? Why do you think Keats calls this “who” a bride of quietness”? Is the bride made of quietness or married to quietness? Explain.
            2. Why do you think the “Bride of quietness” is a foster child of silence and “slow time”?
            3. Interpret the phrase “leaf-fringed legend.” In other words, why might a legend be “leaf-fringed”?
            4. Where is Tempe? Describe the “dales of Arcady.”
            5. Does the first verse enable you to picture the Greek urn? Why or why not?
            6. Draw the urn based on Keats’s description of it?
            7. How could unheard melodies be sweeter than “heard melodies”?
            8. Why do you think Keats calls the Greek vessel in his poem an urn rather than an amphora, krater or lekythos?
            9. In your opinion do the following two lines from stanza 2, represent something positive or negative — or a combination of both? Explain your answer. “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave/Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare…”
            10. Explain the contrast in lines 5-10 in stanza 3: “More happy love…a parching tongue.”
            11. Compare the 4th stanza to the relief on the Pompeii sacrificial altar.
            12. Why does Keats call the urn an “Attic shape”?
            13. How can the scene on the urn “tease us out of thought”?” Why do you think Keats uses the word “tease” here?
            14. What figure of speech is “Cold Pastoral”?  Why?
            15. Interpret the last two lines of the poem.

1. by Jesse Bryant Wilder, Editor © NEXUS, 1997.

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN by John Keats

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?

 

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!

 

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,

For ever piping songs for ever new;

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,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

 

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?

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

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

 

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

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,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

Ode to Psyche

To understand the poem you should be familiar with:

1. 1. 1. 1. The myth of Cupid and Psyche (look it up online to make sure you know the general outline of the story). NOTE: The earliest known account of this myth is by Apuleius, a 2nd-century African-Roman writer who studied in Athens. Many interpreters of Ode to Psyche claim that the reason Keats calls Psyche the “latest born” is because she is first mentioned in the 2nd century, long after the appearance of the Olympians in ancient Greece. Keats may have believed this; however, Psyche and Eros (Cupid’s Greek name) appear hundreds of years earlier in Greek art. We shall see that Keats had other more profound reasons for calling Psyche the “latest born and loveliest vision far/Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy.” 
         2. Keats’s notion of evolution or progressive refinement of the gods, which is examined in “Greek Myths & Modern Man” in Antigone and the Greek World, NEXUS. 
         3. The theory that consciousness evolved in ancient Greece. For example, in the Homeric period, the Greeks focused on controlling fearful external forces like storms, earthquakes, eclipses, the power of the sun, forces they worshipped as gods because they governed men’s lives (see “When the Gods Ruled” in Antigone and the Greek World): “When holy were the haunted forest boughs/Holy the air, the water and the fire.” The water was holy because no one thought of it as H2O; it was a mysterious live-giving substance. Gradually, Greek consciousness turned inward; man tamed or at least better understood the forces around him and grew introspective (an idea expressed in William Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us” or Rousseau’s Social Contract:  “Man is born free [the early stage of consciousness in a child or early man], but everywhere he’s in chains [self-consciousness and the inhibitions that accompany it].)

In the poem Keats laments the fact that although Psyche is the most beautiful and refined of all the gods and goddesses, no temples were built to honor her. Why should the best not be worshipped? And why does Keats call the Olympians a “faded hierarchy”?

                     O latest born and loveliest vision far

                     Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

In these lines we note two key ideas:  a) Psyche was the last of the goddesses and gods to be born and therefore the most refined (according to Keats’s notion of evolution), and b) because of her birth (which corresponded to man’s new or heightened awareness of his own psyche), the worship of forces external to the mind declined (“faded hierarchy”). The power of the psyche was now seen to surpass that of the external forces. With his mental powers, man could leash the forces of nature that once dominated and terrified him (as Sophocles points out in “Ode on Man” in Antigone). This is why there are no temples to Psyche. She is not an external force, but an internal one. Admiration for Psyche signaled a decline in the Olympian religion, a psychological shift from an external focus to an internal one. If any temple is to be built to Psyche, it is appropriate to erect it in the mind, as Keats does in his poem.

With typical Keatsian tension, the poet celebrates the rise of Psyche and, at the same time, feels nostalgic for the days before her birth when the external forces and older gods held sway. As in the “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the reason for celebration is also the cause for grief. To resolve this contradiction, Keats attempts to combine the two modes of consciousness discussed above by building a cerebral temple to Psyche in the old pantheistic style: 

                        I will be thy priest, and build a fane

                        In some untrodden region of my mind,

                        Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

                        Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind

He worships the old religion (“happy pieties”) and the new religion of the mind at the same time, although they are often considered mutually exclusive, as in Wordsworth’s “The World is Too Much with Us.”

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US by William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,

Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;—

Little we see in Nature that is ours;

We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!

This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;

The winds that will be howling at all hours,

And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers;

For this, for everything, we are out of tune;

It moves us not. Great God! I’d rather be

A Pagan suckled in a creed outworn;

So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,

Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;

>Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;

Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.

QUESTIONS

by Jesse Bryant Wilder, Editor

NEXUS – PALLAS COMMUNICATIONS, INC.

© 2019 All Rights Reserved

ODE TO PSYCHE by John Keats

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung

By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,

And pardon that thy secrets should be sung

Even into thine own soft-conched ear:

Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see

The winged Psyche with awaken’d eyes?

I wander’d in a forest thoughtlessly,

And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,

Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side

In deepest grass, beneath the whisp’ring roof

Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran

A brooklet, scarce espied:

 

Mid hush’d, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,

Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian,

They lay calm-breathing, on the bedded grass;

Their arms embraced, and their pinions too;

Their lips touch’d not, but had not bade adieu,

As if disjoined by soft-handed slumber,

And ready still past kisses to outnumber

At tender eye-dawn of aurorean love:

The winged boy I knew;

But who wast thou, O happy, happy dove?

His Psyche true!

 

O latest born and loveliest vision far

Of all Olympus’ faded hierarchy!

Fairer than Phoebe’s sapphire-region’d star,

Or Vesper, amorous glow-worm of the sky;

Fairer than these, though temple thou hast none,

Nor altar heap’d with flowers;

Nor virgin-choir to make delicious moan

Upon the midnight hours;

No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet

From chain-swung censer teeming;

No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

 

O brightest! though too late for antique vows,

Too, too late for the fond believing lyre,

When holy were the haunted forest boughs,

Holy the air, the water, and the fire;

Yet even in these days so far retir’d

From happy pieties, thy lucent fans,

Fluttering among the faint Olympians,

I see, and sing, by my own eyes inspir’d.

So let me be thy choir, and make a moan

Upon the midnight hours;

Thy voice, thy lute, thy pipe, thy incense sweet

From swinged censer teeming;

Thy shrine, thy grove, thy oracle, thy heat

Of pale-mouth’d prophet dreaming.

 

Yes, I will be thy priest, and build a fane

In some untrodden region of my mind,

Where branched thoughts, new grown with pleasant pain,

Instead of pines shall murmur in the wind:

Far, far around shall those dark-cluster’d trees

Fledge the wild-ridged mountains steep by steep;

And there by zephyrs, streams, and birds, and bees,

The moss-lain Dryads shall be lull’d to sleep;

And in the midst of this wide quietness

A rosy sanctuary will I dress

With the wreath’d trellis of a working brain,

With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,

With all the gardener Fancy e’er could feign,

Who breeding flowers, will never breed the same:

And there shall be for thee all soft delight

That shadowy thought can win,

A bright torch, and a casement ope at night,

To let the warm Love in!