Ode on a Grecian Urn: Key Poetic Devices

Apostrophe

Apostrophe (uh-PAW-struh-fee) is a rhetorical device that occurs whenever a speaker directly addresses an absent person, or else an object or abstract entity. In Keats’s poem, the speaker addresses an object: the Grecian urn of the title. Curiously, if we didn’t already know from the title that the poem revolves around an ancient piece of pottery, we readers would find it challenging to identify what the speaker is addressing. Consider the opening four lines:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme

The speaker’s use of the second-person pronoun “thou” makes it clear enough that they are talking to someone or something. It just isn’t obvious to whom or to what. Nor do that lines that follow significantly clarify the issue. Indeed, it takes an interpretive leap—one enabled by the title—to identify the addressee as an urn decorated with painted images. Then, to complicate matters, the speaker shifts away from the urn itself to address the people who are depicted on its surface. For example, in stanza 2 the speaker directly addresses a “fair youth” (line 15) and his “bold lover” (17). The shifting nature of the speaker’s address makes the poem’s final lines famously difficult to interpret, since it’s ambiguous who is saying what to whom.

Ekphrasis

Ekphrasis (eck-FRÆ-sis) is a Greek term that means, simply, “description.” In the context of literary studies, however, ekphrasis refers specifically to a device in which a work of visual art is described in detail. One of the most famous examples of ekphrasis appears in book 18 of Homer’s Iliad, which features a 130-line description of the decorations on the shield of Achilles. Keats does something similar, though far less elaborate, in “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” where the speaker offers a detailed description of the images depicted on the surface of an ancient Greek urn. This description begins in the second half of the opening stanza (lines 5–10):

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Here, the speaker identifies the urn as depicting varied individuals in an idyllic rural valley that the speaker associates with a place like “Tempe” or “Arcady.” The speaker isn’t entirely sure about who the painted figures are meant to be: “deities or mortals, or . . . both.” Even so, it’s clear that there are male and female figures who are on the move and playing instruments, all the while surrounded by “leaf-fring’d” lushness. Similar attention to visual detail defines the poem’s next three stanzas.

Metaphor

A metaphor (MEH-tuh-for) is a figure of speech that makes an implicit comparison between two unlike things. The speaker opens the poem with a with a series of bold metaphors pertaining to the urn (line 1–4):

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme

In the space of four lines, the speaker conjures three separate metaphors to describe the urn. First, they refer to the urn as an “unravish’d bride of quietness.” As a “bride of quietness,” the urn is metaphorically married to silence, and hence has yet to reveal its hidden mysteries. Next, the speaker calls the urn a “foster-child of silence and slow time.” Here again, the speaker uses a metaphor based in kinship relations to express the urn’s unspeaking nature, now adopted into a relationship with what the speaker calls “slow time.” These first two metaphors both emphasize muteness and mystery. It therefore comes as a surprise that the speaker’s third metaphor likens the urn to a “sylvan historian.” Though still mute, this historian nonetheless has great expressive capacity and can tell “a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme.” This opening series of metaphors establishes the speaker’s mastery of figurative language. Yet instead of continuing in the same vein, the speaker shifts into more concrete analysis of the urn’s ornamentation. Metaphor thus gives way to ekphrasis (see above).

Repetition

Keats uses repetition primarily to reflect on the static nature of the images depicted on the urn. More specifically, he uses repetition to highlight the tension between what timelessness enables and what it constrains. For example, take lines 21–27, which emphasize how timelessness enables eternal youth and undying love:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
For ever panting, and for ever young;

These lines interweave two types of repetition. The first type, known as epizeuxis (EH-pih-ZOOK-sis), occurs when a word or phrase is repeated back-to-back. The emphatic insistence in the phrases “happy, happy boughs” and “happy, happy love” comes from the use of epizeuxis. Keats also uses a type of repetition known as diacope (die-ACK-uh-pee), which occurs when a word or phrase is repeated with one or more words between. The isolated instances of “happy” are diacopic, as are the five instances of “for ever.” But regardless of technical designations, these examples of repetition have a clear function. They at once celebrate the possibility of eternally youthful love, and suggest the agitation involved in never getting to consummate that love. Keats uses repetition to make this latter point more forcefully in lines 17–18:

Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve

Here, the repetition of “never, never” emphatically underscores how these eternally youthful lovers will never get to kiss.

Rhetorical Questions

Rhetorical questions aren’t generally meant to be answered. Rather, writers use them to make a point or create a dramatic effect. The speaker poses numerous questions throughout “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” In the opening stanza, for instance, the speaker asks about various details painted on the urn’s surface (lines 5–10):

At first glance, these questions may not seem rhetorical. After all, an art historian who’s deeply familiar with ancient Greek iconography might well be able to answer these questions about who is represented in the image. Likewise, the archaeologist who first uncovered the urn might have an idea about whether the landscape depicted on the urn represents “Tempe” or “Arcady.” In other words, there are likely concrete answers to the speaker’s questions. What, then, makes them rhetorical? In short: usage. Consider the fact that the speaker is addressing a mute object. The urn’s “silent form” (line 44) doesn’t speak, and hence it can’t respond to the speaker’s questions. Even if the questions may have answers, the speaker doesn’t really ask them with the expectation of getting a response. Instead, their cascading questions function to emphasize the enigmatic nature that’s essential to the urn’s mystique. The urn provokes more questions than answers.

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