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Showing posts from September, 2021

Ode on a Grecian Urn

After not having read it for years, I revisited Ode on a Grecian Urn  last night. My take on it below: 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? "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / Thou foster-child of silence..." This time the strangeness of the first two lines struck me. No conjunction links the addresses (e.g. Thou bride or  thou foster-child) and it seems the urn is all three at the same time: bride, child, and historian. A child bride? And how immediately the first line conjures up violence: "still unravish'd,&qu