The Saywot Blog

what the Grecian urn might have looked like

As a one-off this month the Saywot Blog is offering readers a definitive explanation of English Romantic Poetry (1817 -1821)

I know that this seems like a limited time-frame but I had intended to comment on only the one poem by John Keats, but I realised that I preferred to read some of his other work so expanded the range to encompass all three of them. This doesn’t mean I shan’t be throwing in a few quips and quotes from other English Romantics from the time (it’s unlikely though).

How many of you have had the chance, at school or after, to read Keats’ “Ode To A Grecian Urn” ?  The answer is no-one, because as far as my research allows he never wrote a piece “TO” any sort of urn, grecian or otherwise. The bit of verse in question is called something completely different and I’m quite fed up with people calling it by the name of some other poem written by another poet. I don’t know if there is such a poem in existence, for all I know there was 200 crumpled scraps of paper in the bottom of Keats wastepaper basket with Ode To A Grecian Urn and some doggeral underneath it all crossed out and scribbled upon and the title was the result of a printers mishap (but I doubt it)

Here ’tis (see how my style is being adapted by the subject – freaky innit ?)

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:
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?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

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;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,–that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”

It’s not to the urn at all, it’s his description of the images running around the outside of the vessel – I have often wondered if theses Romantic Poets were on drugs or something, still it’s a good story he tells. It doesn’t have all the elements of a Hollywood blockbuster but might be made into a little romantic flick starring Gwynneth Paltrow (if she’s still in the acting caper) along the lines of Sliding Doors

Anyway I digress, Keats went and saw the loot that was stolen from Greece, the Elgin Marbles, did a few sketches one of which was of a Sosibios vase and then did the 5 stanzas of ten lines about his reflection on the engraved images on the urn. It’s a rough and tumble existence being a 19th century English poet. If you want to know how rugged this Keats bloke was have a gander at this http://www.online-literature.com/keats/ – it’s a good a biography as any I suppose.

But I prefer some of his others like ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci‘ or maybe the one that starts with
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains

-this is definitely another druggie poem which is not surprising when you consider that this lad was a chum of Shelley who as we all know was a famous junkie  (remember the film Gothic ? where Percy Shelley, his fiance Mary and Byron take heaps of laudenum and try to out-do each other writing a horror story while they are on holiday in Switzerland, well laudenum was the heroin of the day, we only have Mary Shelley’s ‘Frankenstein’ left to read)  I don’t mind Shelley’s stuff either . When the White Star Line advertised their cruises to the United States on “the unsinkable Titanic” I’m reminded a bit of

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land
Who said: `Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk, a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.
And on the pedestal these words appear —
“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.’

Shelley 1792-1822

I was holding onto this one for GW Bush, but Obama gave him the push before I had a chance to unleash this cautionary tale of pride and hubris

and that’s today’s hour complete, I might come back and have another crack at more dead poets later, but there are far more interesting things happening here at the moment

I went and had a look at an exhibition opening last night in Adelaide, South Australia

Mandi Whitten Photography exhibition

quite good indeed, if you’re down that way – pop in, these art works aren’t going to become less expensive to buy in the future and it has been widely and favourably reviewed