Ode On A Grecian Urn - Structure

Structure

In 1819, Keats attempted to write sonnets but found that the form did not satisfy his purpose because the pattern of rhyme worked against the tone that he wished to achieve. When he turned to the ode form, he found that the standard Pindaric form used by poets such as John Dryden was inadequate to properly discuss philosophy. Keats developed his own type of ode in "Ode to Psyche", which preceded "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and other odes he had written in 1819. Keats's creation established a new poetic tone that accorded with his aesthetic ideas about poetry. He further altered this new form in "Ode to a Nightingale" and "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by adding a secondary voice within the ode, creating a dialogue between two subjects. The technique of the poem is ekphrasis, the poetic representation of a painting or sculpture in words. Keats broke from the traditional use of ekphrasis found in Theocritus's Idyll, a classical poem that describes a design on the sides of a cup. While Theocritus describes both motion found in a stationary artwork and underlying motives of characters, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" replaces actions with a series of questions and focuses only on external attributes of the characters.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is organized into ten-line stanzas, and has a rhyme scheme beginning with a Shakespearian quatrain (ABAB) and ending with a Miltonic sestet (CDECED). The same pattern is used in "Ode on Indolence", "Ode on Melancholy", and "Ode to a Nightingale", which makes the poems unified in structure as well as theme. The word "ode" itself is of Greek origin, meaning "sung". While ode-writers from antiquity adhered to rigid patterns of strophe, antistrophe, and epode, the form by Keats's time had undergone enough transformation that it represented a manner rather than a set method for writing a certain type of lyric poetry. Keats's odes seek to find a "classical balance" between two extremes, and in the structure of "Ode on a Grecian Urn", these extremes are the symmetrical structure of classical literature and the asymmetry of Romantic poetry. The use of the ABAB structure in the beginning lines of each stanza represents a clear example of structure found in classical literature, and the remaining six lines appear to break free of the traditional poetic styles of Greek and Roman odes.

Keats's metre reflects a conscious development in his poetic style. The poem contains only a single instance of medial inversion (the reversal of an iamb in the middle of a line), which was common in his earlier works. However, Keats incorporates spondees in 37 of the 250 metrical feet. Caesurae are never placed before the fourth syllable in a line. The word choice represents a shift from Keats's early reliance on Latinate polysyllabic words to shorter, Germanic words. In the second stanza, "Ode on a Grecian Urn", which emphasizes words containing the letters "p", "b", and "v", uses syzygy, the repetition of a consonantal sound. The poem incorporates a complex reliance on assonance, which is found in very few English poems. Within "Ode on a Grecian Urn", an example of this pattern can be found in line 13 ("Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd") where the "e" of "sensual" connects with the "e" of "endear'd" and the "ea" of "ear" connects with the "ea" of "endear'd". A more complex form is found in line 11 ("Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard") with the "ea" of "Heard" connecting to the "ea" of "unheard", the "o" of "melodies" connecting to the "o" of "those" and the "u" of "but" connecting to the "u" of "unheard".