Exercises

1)The poet is addressing to the urn

2.a)The ways are:

      1)thou still unravished bride of quietness

2)thou foster-child of silence a slow time

3)sylvan historian, who canst thou express

      2.a)The words silence and quietness are synonyms. The second and third deals with time. The urn have the ability to tell the story.

2.b)The words quietness and silence remember a world that is not in the time but it is another. On the other hand history can be collocated only in the time. The words are in contradiction because they  deal with 2 different times.

2.c)There are the words wild and leaf.

2.d) The questions anticipate the characters and the themes that are drawn in the urn.

3.a) The reason why in the lines 11-14 we find the paradox is the concept of imagination that used romantic poets. They consider the imagination a cognitive faculty able to reconcile opposites or discordant qualities.

3.b.1) They are about a couple of lover that are going to kiss and a young man that play pipes and timbrels.

3.b.2)Because they are carved in the urn, they can't change.

3.b.3)They can't kiss because they can't change they will remain in the same position forever.

         I believe that they are positive. they know that they will love forever and the time won't change her beauty.  

4.a.1) The words are refereed to melodist and leaves and couple. This words are repeated in a particular scheme. There is the word happy. Then it is followed by the for ever. These repetition continue from line 21 to 27.

4.a.2)1)the boughs can't leave the leaves

          2)the melodist play songs for ever new

          3)the love will be for ever warm

4.a.3)They have a positive connotation because the leaves, the love and the song won't change in the future. They will remain perfect for ever.

4.b.1)There is a contradiction because in the second stanza the poet says that the couple will be happy for ever although they won't kiss. They will be unhappy because they will never kiss.

5.a.)The scene described is a sacrifice of a caw out of a town that has been left abandoned.

       The poet uses a personification of the town and asks it some questions.

5.b)The atmosphere is solemn because it is a narration of a sacrifice. It is a fundamental moment for the future of the city.

6.a)1)O attic shape! Fair attitude! With brede

      2)Of marble men and maidens overwrought

      3)With forest branches and trodden weed

      4)thou, silent form ,dost tease us out of thought

the poet says that the urn have fair attitude and it has bredes of man and maidens. The poet elevates the beauty of the urn.

The poet recalls the word silence

Finally the art has the function to render eternal what it represents.

6.c) it represents the people in front of the eternity. They are lost in front of  it.

7.a)in the final couplet  the poet says that the urn will preserve for the posterity its lesson. It is what the urn knows and what it must know. 

7.b) in my opinion the second statement is truth because the art is a means of communication that render eternal the ideas of the olden. Today all people can learn  from teaching of the urn.