John is expressing the artful craft of an Urn. Each element has its own beauty and has a story to tell that plays on and on. I have interpreted some of the contents much differently than the footnotes at the bottom of the pages. "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time," (pg 440, lines 1-2) for me, represents the uniting of the soon-to-be contents of the urn that will host (like a foster parent) the ashes for the time to come. The sexual pursuit, as so described, may be at the middle to the end of the first stanza. John mentions how there is a hunt for the maidens who struggle to escape the wild ecstasy.
"Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss," (pg 441, line 17) is a way for John to say that the lovers are merely a frozen image. They are close in proximity but will never meet as lovers do. "Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;" (pg 441, lines 21-2) represents the stillness of time that the Urn reflects. The perfectly painted leaves will never fall and Spring will never come. The third stanza continues to dwell on the stillness of time and of all the things that are and will never be.
Stanza four depicts the event that the Urn represents. The presence of the priests and the silent town are all symbols of the passing. The fifth stanza reiterates the everlasting life of the Urn. Man will age, yet the Urn will remain an eternal beauty.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Mishawn,
You selected a good poem to discuss in this post--the odes of Keats have a lot going on in them! Your comments don't seem quite as focused or as detailed as in your previous ones, though. One suggestion I would make would be to provide more context for the quotations before you analyze them, and perhaps to limit your self to fewer quotations but to discuss them at greater length. By the end of your remarks, as you dismiss two stanzas of the poem in two sentences, you really aren't devoting enough attention to the poem. Remember to "say more about less" and not to generalize or resort to summarizing the poem.
Post a Comment