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John Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ is one of the odes of Keats which is
full of imagery to describe an urn. Keats is called an escapist- he has a
tendency to escape from reality into an imaginary world for the sake of
being free from the bitter real life. Keats is a man experienced from
practically cruel world, from various sources. Whenever he saw in British
museum an urn on whose surface were depicted or carved many nice
pictures, he fell into his desired imaginary world for sometimes, and
thought that imagination was better than the reality. Later, in order to
describe the urn, lives of beings, and the surroundings, Keats uses a
number of images that depict some vivid pictures in our mind. At this
moment, we are suitable to look into the imagery in Ode on a Grecian
.Urn
The ‘leaf fringed legend’ is also an image which indicates that the
-urn is decorated with various scenes, especially with trees of woods
.’What leaf-fringed legend haunts about thy shape‘
Again, at the end of the first stanza, the poet creates some images
for the pictures on the urn with some rhetorical questions which are vivid
-and passionate
?What men of gods are these? What maidens loth‘
?What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape
?What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy
Seeing the boughs full of leaves, and melodist piping songs, Keats thinks
that the spring of the boughs will be and the melodist will pipe songs
forever, but he himself is suffering the distress, misery and frustration,
-and will also continue to suffer. He says
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
At the last stanza of the poem, the poet addresses the urn as ‘Fair
attitude’ that contains marble men and over-excited maidens, and ‘cold
.pastoral’ because, the urn is not alive, and about the rural