John Keats-Ode on a Grecian Urn

Part I:

For starters, let me just say that, in general, I dislike poetry with a fiery passion. Far too often I find myself irritated with my inability to comprehend or interpret poems. However, after several readings of John Keats “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” I can honestly say that I enjoyed it. Keats was able to draw me in from the beginning and keep me interested until the end. I found the poem to be very imaginative, as if Keats took, what to most people is an ordinary house item, and created a world of the past, a world unknown to most of us, and then returned to the present. The only "problem" I have with the poem is the last two lines. They left me with this feeling of understanding and confusion. It is as if I want to understand what Keats is trying to say, but I can’t because I feel like the two lines are randomly added. I feel as though it were a quote that was more applicable in Keats' age, but has since changed.

Part II:

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” begins with a description of the urn, and a series of questions about it. It seemed as if the narrator were questioning the figures placed upon the urn. Were they about gods and goddesses, or mere mortals? What were the stories behind them, their histories? In line 9 of stanza I, Keats poses the question “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?” proposing that the urn is a timeless artifact with these stories and figures ‘struggling to escape’ and be heard so that they can continue on through time. Once the second stanza begins, the poem journeys back to the first of a number of scenes scrawled on the urn. In the first scene, the reader is presented with a young couple enjoying the notes being emitted from a pipe. Although the reader cannot hear the sound, it is imaginative and endearing to think of two people in love enjoying each other’s company. However, there is a melancholy tone there. “Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,” it states in line 17 of the second stanza, possibly saying that the couple can’t be together. In the next stanza, the passion and desire of the young couple is painted clearly, as phrases like “ever panting,” “breathing human passion,” “burning forehead,” and “parching tongue” are used. The word “happy” is used repeatedly, mocking the actual circumstances, because the young couple cannot be happy if they are not allowed to be together or express their sexual desires. The journey on the urn continues into stanza four, but presents a different scene. There are people, but they lack description. Instead, the focus is upon the town, which is empty. In this stanza, the narrator indirectly refers to the urn by claiming that while the town and its people will fade, its art can live on. In the fifth and final stanza of the poem, the narrator returns to the present and evaluates the urn once again. He says “dost tease us out of thought,” implying that the urn serves as a medium for accessing an old reality. This is what the narrator was illustrating throughout the entire poem about art in general. Art, in almost any form, hold stories about eras and people that are no longer here.