Ode+on+a+Grecian+Urn

Ode on a Grecian Urn __ What is happening in this poem? __  · He contrasts the constancy of the urn with what he sees around him, his reality · He is looking at an urn and describing the elaborate designs on it   · Focuses on the imagery of the urn

__ Purposes of the poem __ > “beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
 * Provide the audience with a different perspective on life and death.
 * Death can be beautiful because Death is so pure and “truthful”. Death puts an end to deception, a dead person is just dead and all they’ve done is wiped by it?
 * Or maybe death shows the beauty of life
 * Immortality
 * Passage of time

__ What are some significant images? __ · Imagery of sound/silence “What pipes and timbrels” “Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter” · Imagery of love “Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees…” “unravished bride” · Imagery of death/pain “a burning forehead, and a parching tongue”

__ Ideas __ · “Happy happy happy”, sarcastic tone towards depiction on urn, immortality/duration of men · Gods and mortals, men worship deities in life and death, mortality · Silence and music, imagination is greater than reality · Mortality à Generations/waste, man lives through creations “marble men and maidens”