artistic illustration of a Grecian urn set against a backdrop of hills and columns

Ode on a Grecian Urn

by John Keats

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What archaic forms are present in "Ode on a Grecian Urn"?

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The archaic forms present in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" include the phrases “thy song,” “thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,” and “that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” In using such archaic forms, Keats is emphasizing the great age of the Grecian urn.

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Ode on a Grecian Urn” is written in a deliberately archaic style. Primarily, this is because Keats wants to draw attention to the age of the eponymous artifact, an urn from ancient Greece that is thousands of years old.

In addressing the urn, Keats speaks a language that is self-consciously poetic. He is addressing the material manifestation of timeless truth, and so he adopts a suitably reverent form of address that utilizes outmoded pronouns, such as “ye,” and archaic conjugations, such as “shalt,” where nowadays we would say “you” and “shall,” respectively.

In the very first line, Keats addresses the urn as “thou,” which is the archaic form of “you,” the second-person singular subject pronoun. What's notable here is that “thou” was used in relation to God, so when people would pray to the Almighty, they might say something like “thou art my God,” meaning “you are my...

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God.” Keats's use of “thou” indicates a certain reverence for the Grecian urn, as if it were an object of godlike veneration.

Arguably the most famous use of an archaic form in the “Ode” comes in the last two lines:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. (Emphasis added)

This second-person plural pronoun is used quite often in the King James Version of the Bible, such as in Matthew 7:1, “Judge not, that ye be not judged.” These are the words of Jesus and are clearly intended to carry authority.

By the same token, the urn in Keats's “Ode” speaks to humankind with authority concerning the synonymity of beauty and truth.

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Archaic forms are words or forms of words that are no longer in common usage. They are most often employed to lend an added sense of time past to a work of literature set in an earlier time period.

It thus makes perfect sense that Keats would use archaic forms in "Ode on a Grecian Urn." In this poem, he is transporting readers back into the ancient Greek scene depicted on the urn.

One archaic form he uses is the word brede, one we never hear any more but that means braid or wide braid. We find it in the first line of the final stanza, in which Keats is conveying that the scene painted on the urn runs around the middle of it like a braid. In this case, the use of the archaic form allows him to achieve a full, proper rhyme with the word "weed" at the end of line three of that stanza.

Some other archaic forms that Keats uses were less archaic in his time period, but even then going out of fashion, so that they would have had an old-fashioned quality. These include verb forms such as canst, wilt, dost, doth, drest, and hast, which are archaic forms of our verbs will, do, dress, and has. The archaic second-person pronouns that were once used for you—thy and thou—are also repeated in the poem.

These were not entirely unused in common speech in Keats's period, but they were, even then, becoming quaint. The word ye is the archaic form of the plural second-person pronoun: today, we use you. By saying ye, the urn, when speaking to us at the end of the poem, is addressing all of humankind, not a single person.

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What archaic forms are present in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”?

In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” John Keats employs several interesting archaic forms that mirror the archaic nature of the urn itself. The very word “Grecian” is in itself an archaic adjective. We would say “Greek” today.

Keats also uses archaic forms for his pronouns. Look at the first line, in which he addresses the urn: “Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness.” “Thou” is the archaic form of the singular second-person pronoun “you.” The poem just would not sound as high in language or beauty if Keats had said, “You still unravish'd bride of quietness.” The poet uses this pronoun throughout the work as well as the possessive version “thy” (lines 5, 16, 19, and 38) rather than “your.” Keats also employs the archaic form of the plural second-person pronoun when he addresses “ye soft pipes” (line 12) and again in the poem's final line. We would say “you,” but the archaic style flows more smoothly and better fits the poem's subject matter.

Keats's choice of verb forms is also archaic. Notice the second-person singular verbs “canst” (lines 3, 15, 17), “hast” (line 19), “wilt” (line 20), “Lead'st” (line 43), “art” (line 50), “dost” (line 54), “shalt” (line 57), and “say'st” (line 58). He even uses the archaic third-person singular “doth” for “do” in line 55.

Finally, Keats uses a few other words that may also be classified as archaic: for instance, “brede” in line 51, which means “braided,” “trodden” in line 52, “e'er” in line 50, and “loth” in line 8 (a variant spelling of “loath”).

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