Author: Ano Sensei
Format: Video
Structure: Iambic pentameter, Ode stanza
Related content:
- • Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn – Reading & Analysis (Playlist) (Video Playlist)
- • Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn – Reading (Video)
- • Keats: Ode on a Grecian Urn – Reading & Analysis (Video)
John Keats, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" - In-depth analysis, exploring the deeper meaning of the poem.
0:13 First stanza: Textual analysis
1:52 First stanza: Visualizing the poem
4:00 Second stanza: Textual analysis
6:42 The world of the imagination
7:02 Third stanza: Textual analysis
8:32 Context and comments: Suffering and escapism
9:37 ...Fourth stanza: Textual analysis
11:50 Suffering in the world of the urn
12:51 Fifth stanza: Textual analysis
14:44 Comments on the poem's conclusion
Check out my video on Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale" here: https://youtu.be/PoVy5zvRJHc.
Find my other videos on the Romantic poets here: https://tinyurl.com/anoromantics. Subscribe now!
Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLzVb6yL_jY69RMez733LUEYNI4-LgSjGh
Keats's "Ode on a Grecian urn" is one of the best-known poems of the Romantic period. Here I discuss it mainly from the point of view of its themes and imagery, along with some discussion of the poetic techniques. Check https://youtu.be/sbmiq_70dpg for my reading of this poem.
If you would like subtitles/captions in another language, please tell me and I will add them.
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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."Show More
184 Comments
Thank you so much! As a young Italian high school teacher I needed to brush up on my Keats and you were so good and useful!!! Keep up the great work! Greetings from Italy 🙂
Thank you for the feedback! I’m glad you found it useful. Yes, I will carry on making these videos; I hope you will continue to find them useful!
Thank you for your help! ☺️
You’re welcome!
Awesome presentation sir 👍 thank you very much.
You’re welcome!
This helps me in studying for my final exams!
Thank you very much and I appreciate your work🙏
Greetings from Oman
You are welcome. I hope you get a good result!
This was so helpful 👍 I love your lecture.It really helps me Thank you so much sir for this explanation God Bless you 🙏
You’re very welcome! I’m glad you found it useful.
Hi! I’m from Argentina, I study at University of La Plata and I’m taking a Contemporary English Literature class, and your analysis of the poem was highly useful. Thank you for sharing your knowledge! Hope you are doing great 🙂
Thank you for the feedback. I’m glad you found it useful!
This is incredibly clear sir.. Thank you very much.. ❤
You are welcome! I’m glad you liked it.
this video was incredibly helpful and the concepts are explained so perfectly, thank you!
Thank you for the feedback! I’m glad you liked it.
This was so helpful! Thank you very much Sir! 🙏
You’re very welcome!
Wow best explanation on you tube I came across. Please analyse Canterbury tales like this. I will be honoured.
I’m glad you liked it! I’d love to make something on the Canterbury Tales, but it would be a huge task, and anyway I’ve got another commitment for the next three months or so. I might have a go at doing parts of it at some stage…
@anosensei which College, university you teach before. The way you teach is very explicit.
@Nitish.kumar992 I taught at Sophia University, Tokyo, for 25 years before retirement.
Wonderful teaching appreciable
I’m glad you liked it!
I’m currently studying John Keats for my college in Brazil, in English Literature. I swear, your analysis are helping so much! Thank you so so much!
I’m glad to hear it! Thank you for the feedback.
I loved your pictorial analysis of the ode ❤️
Thank you for the feedback!
You are an excellent teacher ANO SENSEI, I love your lectures. Please keep uploading, it really helps. I skip classes and seek content online. Today I stumbled upon your channel and I’m so glad I did. Also, can we portray the sacrifice, the heifer, and the priest as symbols of the Urn itself? Since an Urn is where ashes are traditionally preserved….?
Thank you for the feedback! I’m glad you found it useful. Yes, I want to upload a lot more videos. I’m a bit bogged down with something else at the moment, but things are moving slowly forwards!
Your observation about the sacrifice is a good one. The Greeks used vases for many things, and I think the jury is still out on what kind of urn Keats had in mind, but it seems likely that the poem is based on a neo-Attic urn, made in Rome sometime between about 50 B.C. and 50 A.D. and used either for funerary purposes or just as decoration (see, e.g., Ian Jack, _Keats and the Mirror of Art_, 1967, p. 212).
The urn as portrayed in the poem has two sides, one depicting a festival, or celebration in the countryside, the other showing a darker side of that festival, that is, the sacrifice, leading Keats on to speculate about the town that has been abandoned by the festival-goers. I’m not sure I would exactly say that the sacrifice aspect symbolizes the urn, though. The way I see it, the two pictures the poet describes on the urn reflect its two aspects, as a celebration of life and a reminder of death.
I think it is reasonable to suppose that Keats has a funerary urn in mind, and that the heifer and the priest and so on reflect the more sombre purpose of the urn but – like much else in Keats’s poetry – that side of the picture is balanced almost equally with the other side, the life-affirming “happy, happy love”.
@anosensei
Thank you for replying:) It means a lot.
Do you think that the “unheard melodies” could be the paintings on the urn? The paintings of those instruments? They are singing a song that has no music and these melodies are sweeter because they will stay, unlike the music they would have actually produced in the real world..
@user-dr9di3ih7u Something like that, but to me it seems rather as if the paintings of the instruments do actually play “ditties” of no tone” to the poet’s “spirit”. That is, he *imagines* the music they might play, which is “sweeter” than any actual music played on real instruments.
Perhaps there are shades of Plato here. The essence is perfect and exists only in the mind. The creative act of bringing it into existence necessarily clouds it with a degree of imperfection. Keats seems to reflect that idea, implying that things can only be perfect in the world of the imagination.
@anosensei
I have noted that down. Thank you so much. Will be studying the Ode to Autumn next:)
I really enjoyed it very much, thank you!!!
You are welcome!
You really make me more interested in literature, thank you! 🙏🏻🙏🏻🙏🏻
Thank you! It’s great to hear that!
Mesmerizing stuff, indeed… So exquisitely articulated and with concretization of images… Lovely 😍😍😍
Thank you for the feedback. I’m glad you enjoyed it!
It’s really a very helpful video. Thanks a million 🥺♥ I am wondering where I can find the pictures of the urn you pictured through describing its images.
Thank you for the feedback. The pictures were taken from a couple of old books. One of them is online here: http://tehne.com/library/smith-j-m-ancient-greek-female-costume-london-1882.
I’m not sure about the other; if I can track it down, I’ll let you know.
@anosensei I just wanted the second image or more obviously the other side of the urn. I cannot find it in the link you send.
@anosensei I mean the second picture you designed, as one picture not a group of pictures, not the original one. Have you understood my point?
@pearl2158 Oh, I see! Well, I put those together for the video. I think the best thing you can do would just be to take some screenshots from the video. That way you can get all the pictures you want! As long as you’re not planning to sell them or anything, I have no objection to that.
@anosensei As if you read my mind 😂😂,of course I have no intention to do anything with them rather I wanted to share them with my class during interpreting the poem as you did,so I already did take screenshots, but I thought you have the opposite side of the urn as a complete image just like the first image.
I can feel a lot of enthusiasm from you about the poem in this, haha. A genuinely interesting take on it.
Thank you for saying so. Yes, enthusiasm is the one thing I’ve always got bags of – well, almost always!
thank you very much, u gave me a different understanding of what teaching should be! that was fun and life changing thank u immensely
Wow! That’s some feedback. Thank you! Yes, I remember what seemed like endless hours of my childhood being wasted in tedium in deadly classrooms, and I’ve always felt that learning should be fun, but in an enhancing way, not just frivolous. All best wishes from Japan!
@anosensei I am very thankful for your sweet replay and more thankful that I discover the treasure that is your channel ❤❤🙏 god bless you. The education system in my country (egypt) is pretty much non existing so thank u for providing me with this amazing experience🌷🌷🌷
@Nohame44pl Please, if there is any topic inside English language, literature and history that you would like me to make a video about, don’t hesitate to let me know; I may not be able to meet your request, but I will do my best!
@anosensei oh my god!! How generous you are thanks alot.. at the moment I am studying eolian harp by coleridge and he is the only romantic poet that I dislike .. only if you could make a video about him I will be above the moon 🤧your showering me with your kindness🤧 thank u very very much❤❤ I will binge watch your amazing videos everyday .. cannot say thank u enough 🌷🌷🌷
@Nohame44pl OK! Yes, it’s a good choice. I have one or two other things to work on, but I’ll try to get round to this in a couple of weeks’ time or so…