Student Question
Can you scan the line from "When old age" to "ye need to know" in Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn"?
Quick answer:
In "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the lines from "When old age" to "ye need to know" are primarily in iambic pentameter, a rhythmic pattern of five feet with alternating unstressed and stressed syllables. Keats introduces a variation with a trochaic foot (stressed followed by unstressed) at "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." The scansion begins with "When old age shall" in iambic form, maintaining the poem's metrical structure before the trochaic shift.
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. ~Keats
Scansion of poetic verses can sometimes be difficult because poets may
employ variation of the meter, elision of syllables,
or addition of a pause to create the meter.
Syllable counting is useful for very simplistic
verse that doesn't employ variation, elision, or pause, but it can--and often does--lead astray on scansion of complex verse. In the lines you are asking about, Keats attempts an artistic variation of the meter of the...
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poem by altering the opening foot of one verse; his attempt is made with more or less success depending upon the opinion of the critic scanning the poem.
The preceding lines are in a steady iambic pentameter, which is five feet of a
classic English rhythm da BA / da BA / da
BA / da BA / da BA [the
apostrophe' indicates stress for BA']:
O At' / -tic shape!' / Fair at' / -ti -tude!' / with brede'
Of mar' / -ble men' / and mai' / -dens o' / -ver -wrought,'
With for' / -est bran' / -ches and' / the trod' / -den weed';
Thou, si' / -lent form,' / dost tease' / us out' / of thought'
As doth' / e -ter' / -ni -ty.' / Cold Pas' / -tor -al!'
The last lines, from "When old age" through to "need to know," continue the same meter of five feet of iambs, but Keats varies the meter for "Beauty." On this opening foot, Keats uses trochaic rhythm, which is described as DA ba, with the stress on the first instead of second beat of a foot. With this variation, the scansion is as follows:
When old' / age shall' / this gen' / -er -a' / -tion waste',
Thou shalt' / re -main', / in midst' / of o' / -ther woe'
Than ours', / a friend' / to man,' / to whom' / thou sayst,'
"BEAU' -ty / is truth', / truth beau' / -ty"---that' / is all'
Ye know' / on earth,' / and all' / ye need' / to know.'
There is some debate on how the first two feet of "When old age shall ..." should be scanned. In British English, the verb "shall" would take sentence stress, and the introductory "when" of an adverbial clause would rarely take sentence stress, while the adjective "old" modifying "age" would take sentence stress: “When old' age shall'.” Therefore, there is little reason to suppose the scansion for those words would be anything other than iambic, which would render the line as iambic pentameter:
When old' / age shall' / this gen' / -er -a' / -tion waste', ...