John Keats'  "Ode on a Grecian Urn"  (1819)
Thou still unravished 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-fringed 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 escpe? 
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 endeared,
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,
Forever 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,
Forever piping songs forever new; 
More happy love! more happy, happy love! 
Forever warm and still to be enjoyed,
Forever panting, and forever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,
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 dressed? 
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." 

Glossary:

Tempe: valley in Thessaly
Arcady: a region of ancient Greece, but primarily a vision of the pastoral ideal, of being at one with the land.
Sensual: sensuous
And...return: The "little town" is not on the urn but exists only in the implication of art
Attic: pertaining to Attica, i.e. Athens, Greece
Brede: embroidery
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 




John Keats   (1795 - 1821)

For more information about Keats and analysis of his works, click here.
 

John Keats, one of the greatest English poets, was born in 1795 in  London.    His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was fourteen; these sad circumstances drew him particularly close to his two brothers, George and Tom, and his sister Fanny. 

Keats was well educated at a school in Enfield, where he began a translation of Virgil's Aeneid. In 1810 he was apprenticed to a surgeon. His first attempts at writing poetry date from about 1814, and include an `Imitation' of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. In 1815 he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital, London; one year later, he abandoned the profession of medicine for poetry. 

Keats's first volume of poems was published in 1817. It attracted some good reviews, but these were followed by the first of several harsh attacks by the influential Blackwood's Magazine. Undeterred, he pressed on with his poem `Endymion', which was published in the spring of the following year. 

Keats toured the north of England and Scotland in the summer of 1818, returning home to nurse his brother Tom, who was ill with tuberculosis. After Tom's death in December he moved into a friend's house in Hampstead, now known as Keats House.  There he met and fell deeply in love with a young neighbour, Fanny Brawne. During the following year, despite ill health and financial problems, he wrote an astonishing amount of poetry, including `The Eve of St Agnes', `La Belle Dame sans Merci', `Ode to a Nightingale' and `To Autumn'. His second volume of poems appeared in July 1820; soon afterwards, by now very ill
with tuberculosis, he set off with a friend to Italy, where he died the following February.
 
(British Library's Online Information Server)