Ode on a Grecian Urn

Production of the Creative Urn

Task 1:

• My friend`s urn is very complete because it contains all the description  that the poet wrote on "The ode on a Grecian Urn"

• They used characters, for the example the priest with the cow, the music produced by the pipes, the girls running away, the voice of the poem with the “youth”.

• They added the nature that the voice describes in the bottom of the urn.

• ·     They missed something important that the one who speaks emphasise as the pipes, the coloured and sweet flowers.  Also an important point in the poem was the water described by him, that they did not putted on the urn 

a)      After reading the poem and making our own urn, I understood the images used by the poet to describe the urn, he used visual, auditory and smell images. For example when the speaker says “…ye soft pipes play on”  here he combines two images as we mentioned before is a synesthetic image here is combined a tactile image “soft” and the auditory image “melodies”.

Moreover some metaphors that could be related with J. Keats death

“When old age shall this generation waste,…” because he questioned and thought  about  death. 

Stantza One

Why is the urn compared to a " still unravish'd bride"?

• "still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.

• "unravish'd" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time.

• The urn is a "Sylvan historian" because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.

• Is it paradoxical that the urn, a "bride of quietness", can tell its stories "more sweetly than our rhyme" (meaning the poem itself)?

• The gentleness of the term "sylvan historian" and his "flowery tale" told "sweetly" do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)

• The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience's relationship with "Art" in general...

Stanza two

"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!"

In this stanza, the speaker is combining the elements he mentioned, for example the music with the nature.He uses the word "sweet" containing two connotations which are the smell of the flowers related with the enviroment and the sound that the pipes are producing. Moreover the speaker mention the importance of that sounds that are heard and those who are not, in this case he prefer the ones that are not heard (the feelings of the speaker produced by the environment)

                        The idea of  "pipes unheard" is an oxymoron because the word contradicts what the pipes are for and that they can be hear because with the combination of wind they produce a smooth sound.