Ode on a Grecian Urn

The famous last lines of Keats's poem have been the subject of heated critical debate for over two hundred years. As such, we're not going to be able to settle the matter of their meaning here and...

Keats uses the poetic device of apostrophe in this poem. Apostrophe occurs when an inanimate object is addressed as if it is alive. Keats addresses the urn in the first stanza, calling it: Thou...

According to the Cambridge Dictionary, "A pastoral piece of art, writing, or music represents the pleasant and traditional features of the countryside." When Keats refers to the urn as a "Cold...

John Keats was an English Romantic poet. Keats highlighted the use of imagery in his poetry to speak to the follow characteristics typical to the Romantic period. He valued feeling over reasoning...

The central message of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is the way in which the Grecian Urn represents an eternal beauty that contrasts to the ephemeral nature of man's existence. This is something of a...

In this poem, Keats contemplates a scene painted on a Grecian urn. Greek art was flooding into England at this time, and people were fascinated by it. Sylvan means wooded. What Keats is sees on the...

In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the speaker addresses the urn itself and the images on it. First, the speaker addresses the bride on the urn. She is frozen in time. She has yet to be ravished, so she is...

Since Hellenism refers to the height of Greek culture, especially in regard to its influence and colonization, Keats is a Hellenist in the sense that he continues to spread Greek culture through...

Critics through the ages have been troubled by these last two lines of this wonderful Ode, as they seem on the surface at least to have very little to do with the rest of the poem and the depiction...

It is always important to look at the context of the lines you need to focus on to see what they mean and to try and understand what clues the rest of the poem before and after can give in order to...

It might be helpful, too, to think about other possible meanings of the word "legend" in John Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn." The preceding lines do seem to point toward this standard meaning...

The two words that are repeated frequently in the third stanza are "happy" and "forever." Remember that the speaker of the poem is commenting on a scene that he is seeing painted on a Grecian urn,...

The term "Attic shape" in the final stanza is a synonym for the urn itself. "Attica" is Greece, and "Attic" means relating to Greece or Athens; therefore, "Attic shape" is a parallel construction...

In my opinion, the speaker of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" admires the immortality of the urn's subjects (and of the urn itself) even more than its beauty. With the same idea that a poem can make its...

The Urn is the sylvan historian because it is rather like a picture frame. It has many carvings along its sides which tell the story--and each story will never change as long as the urn itself is...

Ah, one of my favorite controversial subjects to discuss about one of my very favorite poems EVER! The contrast Keats creates between art and life in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is precisely this: that...

John Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" is a formal lyric poem whose metaphoric tension depends upon the dual nature of the urn: While the beautiful urn itself is a symbol of the static quality of art,...

This refeerence to the poem is featured at the beginning of the second stanza, where the speaker comments on the difference between the kind of music that is a product of his own world and the kind...

As always with any question that asks you to examine the meaning of a particular text, it is important to look at the line in context so that you are aware of how it relates to the poem as a whole....

In the second stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn," Keats writes, Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more...

The narrator of the poem speaks directly to the Grecian urn, using a poetic device called apostrophe, which is when a speaker talks to something that is not alive and cannot respond or someone that...

The previous post was very strong. If I may jump to the concluding lines, which are some of the most quote lines in all of poetry: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty-- that is all/ Ye know on earth,...

In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the poet gazes at the picture on an urn from ancient Greece. (If you google "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and "images" you can see Keats's sketch of this urn.) The scene...

In the first stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats, the speaker refers to the urn as an "unravish'd bride of quietness," a "foster-child of silence and of slow time," and a "Sylvan...

In the earlier stanzas, the speaker has described the scenes of beauty on the urn, the young lovers and beautiful natural features. He assures the young man on the urn that, though he will never...

Keats's use of apostrophe in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is an effective method of conveying the speaker's deeply felt emotions. In apostrophe, a writer speaks to a person who is not there or to an...

A great question that should be asked more often. If you read the poem in romantic terms, you might arrive at the following interpretation. The speaker in this poem is tired and bored with his...

The first word in the poem 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' by John Keats is 'Thou.' This tells us as readers that the poet is talking to someone or something, but at first we are not sure what it is - the...

Keats's poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" addresses the titular urn directly and praises its unchanging nature. The urn—upon which images have been placed, conveying a pastoral scene from Ancient...

Our poet/narrator is contemplating a Grecian urn, of course, and he sees and makes observations about life. He sees two scenes" First, he sees a young man wooing a beautiful young woman under a...

What a great question! Count how many times "happy" appears in the 3rd stanza, and then count the "never" in stanza 2, and this conflict produces an irony the speaker can't...

I wonder if there are any other two lines that are debated so much. The closing couplet to the poem is really profound. There will be no easy answers here and I strongly advise you to take what...

Keats focuses on how happy the people seem to be on the urn. They are a group of young people headed out to the countryside for a Greek religious festival. He asks who they are and why they are in...

The interpretation of the last two lines of Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is controversial, primarily because it is unclear whether the urn speaks some or all of the words. Quotation marks would...

"Ode to a Grecian Urn," John Keats's metaphysical contemplation of Nature, Art, and Love finds its tension between the perishable and the eternal. In Stanza V, the speaker abandons his...

The speaker in the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is fascinated and teased by the figures on the urn. All the figures are frozen in time and therefore they exist in an eternal state. But, in being...

John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn" features a speaker reflecting on the nature of art as he looks at the figures painted on an urn. Throughout the poem, the speaker observes the static figures and...

It should also be mentioned that the relationship is based on the “melody” that the poet explicitly refers to in the second and third stanzas. The expression “Heard melodies are sweet, / But those...

One major theme of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is that a beautiful work of art brings comfort and joy to the viewer. In this poem, the narrator gazes at the picture on an ancient Greek urn. It shows a...

To identify the rhyme scheme, it is necessary to consider Keats' entire poem. It features 5 stanzas, each with ten lines. Each stanza develops its own rhyme scheme that follows the same pattern....

Contemplating an ancient Grecian Urn, the poet Keats describes part of what he sees then asks about the legend the relief scene or painted scene represents. He starts out by addressing whom he...

That Keats does describe a composite urn is certainly plausible as free-style urns of the type Keats appears to describe usually depict only one scene that runs continuously around the...

In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the urn was likely a product of Keats' mind, based on images of vases, sculptures and paintings. The scenes depicted are a Dionysian celebration, lovers about to...

Yes, you are pretty much right, especially about the first part of the fourth line. The stress would fall on first syllable of "Beauty," making that dactylic (I think!). Keats must have done that...

While different critics take varying views of the overall unity of Keats' text, the textually logical explanation of the different scenes that he describes is that all are different parts of the...

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats is full of sensuous language and imagery. Of course, since imagery evokes sensory images, the images will by related to and interwoven with the sensuous...

The last two lines of Keats's “Ode on a Grecian Urn” have puzzled successive generations of literary critics and scholars ever since the poem was first published. Not only has it been impossible to...

John Keats’s legendary “Ode on a Grecian Urn” (1819) is inspired by a work of ancient Greek pottery. Its second stanza mentions a picture of two lovers about to kiss but unable to—frozen in time...

The poem consists of five stanzas that reach an emotional crescendo in stanza three then fall back again to a calmer state. In stanza one, the speaker addresses a Grecian urn, noting its quietness...

In this excellent poem we are presented with the effects of contemplating Grecian urns on the speaker. In the line you have identified, the speaker talks of how contemplating this Grecian urn has a...