Page 163 - 100 Best Loved Poems - Teaching Unit

“Ode on a Grecian Urn”
by John Keats, pages 45-46

Vocabulary
citadel – fortress
dales – vales
timbrels – small hand drums
pious – devout
brede – embroidery

1. The poem opens with a series of comparisons between the urn and random types of people. The
comparison between the non-living urn and the very much alive people is known as what?

2. What is the first picture that the speaker sees on the urn?

3. Why are the melodies played by the piper in the urn’s second picture superior to those played by
actual, living pipers?

4. Why, according to the speaker, will the town of the fourth stanza be silent “evermore”?

5. How does the speaker engage, interact, or react to each picture on the urn? Do his responses
change? Why?

6. Who speaks the poem’s final line, “that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”?

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