"Ode on a Grecian Urn" written by John Keats demonstrates how art expresses the ultimate beauty of the urn. Rhythm and rhyme represents the musical quality of the poem through the images and aids in relating to the stories. Each verse connects to the story mentioned before, making the questions Keats has asked in the beginning as almost answers in the end. Keats utilizes the poem to exhibit the divinity and beauty of the urn, which can be communicated through stories. .
Pictures on the urn can reveal more of what can be unwritten. According to Keats, even his written word is insufficient to describe the stories on the urn. He converses with the urn as if it had human understanding. Keats introduces the use an apostrophe throughout the poem to address each story as if it were real. In the first verse, Keats talks about an unravished bride of quietness. The first appearance of this literary device, the untouched bride, represents the "slow time" or immortality of the urn. It begins with the display of a sylvan history with a wooded, natural, beautiful setting. The deities and heroes entering the temples in the great valleys of Tempe and Arcady lead Keats to question what stories are now being told. .
The second verse introduces the next apostrophe, the soft pipes. They speak of an unheard ditty, which relates to the bride of quietness because of their silence. A fair youth plays a never-ending song under a tree that will never be bare because it will always be springtime. The bold lover, another example of an apostrophe, and the fair youth will never kiss but he informs her not to grieve because just like the never-ending song, their love will be forever and will never fade. .
The third verse introduces the next apostrophe, the happy boughs, which cannot shed their leaves and speaks of a happy melodist forever piping songs. This relates back to the fair youth under the tree. The repetition of the words happy and forever link to the "slow time" and the yearning of the first kiss of the bold lover.
