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Essay on Keays "Ode on a Grecian urn"
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Ode on a Grecian Urn An essay by Maynard Paul. 1121 words. In this essay I will start by offering some formal observations on Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and then move on to discuss the central themes and how they are presented as opposites. Metrics. The poem is comprised of five stanzas of ten lines of iambic pentameter. The meter is regular, but as is more the norm than the exception, there are deviations e.g. line three is hypercataletic containing an extra syllable at the end. The poem is pretty well end stopped with some instances of enjambment. When writing out the rhyme scheme I made the following observations : the first four lines are always abab then follows three lines of cde, but these are not repeated. In stanza one the final three lines are dce, in stanza two ced, in three and four cde, and in stanza five returning to dce. It is also possible to say that very generally the four first lines of each stanza introduce a theme that is then elaborated on in the following six lines. Themes. In the first stanza the poet regards an ancient Grecian urn, is struck by its beauty and wonders what mysteries it might contain. It is compared to an "unravish'd bride of quietness" and a "foster child of silence and slow time" The urn itself is unchanged by the passage of time and represents art and a world suspended from ours. It is also a ,"Sylvan historian" capable of offering a glimpse into the lives of the people depicted on its exterior. The stanza starts out in slowly and in the final two lines change gear from stillness to a kind of motion.
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