Understanding Grecian Urn

Understanding Ode on a Grecian Urn

Stanza One 

Why is the urn compared to a " still unravish'd bride"?
"still" has two meanings - "motionless" or "remaining in time". Time and motion are two concepts that the poem explores throughout.
"unravish'd" means unspoiled - a bride yet to lose her virginity; similarly, the urn and the scenes it represents are "unspoiled" by the passage of time.
Explain the term "sylvan historian"(l.3)
The urn is a "Sylvan historian" because it records scenes from a culture lived long ago (ancient greeks); and because it is bordered with leaves, as well as having scenes of the countryside within.
Is it paradoxical that the urn, a "bride of quietness", can tell its stories "more sweetly than our rhyme" (meaning the poem itself)?
The gentleness of the term "sylvan historian" and his "flowery tale" told "sweetly" do not prepare us for the wild sexuality of lines 8-10. (Another contrast!)
What change in viewpoint occurs in lines 8-10?

The short questions and frequent repetitions inject pace into the poem. Notice how the speaker moves from contemplative observer to emotionally-involved participant with these breathless questions. (We have another contrast - that of the participant vs the observer). You may want to think about how I develop this idea throughout, and what it might suggest about the audience's relationship with "Art" in general...

Stanza Two

This stanza develops the romantic notion of the ideal triumphing over the real. Keats believes in the beauty of the unreal, of the infinitely perfect, of the intangible aesthetic of the beauty that exists only on a mental plane that escapes the mundanity of physical existence.  Keats reaffirms the romantic belief that true beauty is not conceivable outside the boundaries of one's abstract conceptions. 

He reinforces this concept through the statement that introduces the second stanza: 

'heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter' 

Here we perceive the author's view on this question of the real versus the ideal.  Keats prefers the tune that is perfect in its immaculate 'in-conception', that is, he prefers the ideal over the physical interpretation of that abstract thought that originates (and should stay) in the mind. 

I personally adhere to this: call me a romantic, call me whatever you like... I believe that the pure essence of a thought, before having to subject it to judgements, choice of words, etc. in the mind is where it belongs if you want to keep it virginal and fresh. Furthermore, no song, like Keats says, sounds even close to what it sounds like after that 'flash of alchemy' (as Ginsberg would put it) in the mind when it is originally conceived. Thoughts and passions are felt, which is why when written down most of them lose their virginity to the roughness and insensibility of the world we live in. 

In terms of the 'unheard pipes', there is one line that calls my attention and makes me hesitant: 

'pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone' 

Here Keats alludes again to the power of the ideal, yet the 'spirit ditties of no tone' evokes such a strong image that it makes us wonder what Keats meant. How can a song have no tone? Is Keats being so romantic, so farfetched, so idealistic and abstract, that he seeks to hear the 'un-hearable'? A song with no tone is like a book with no words- is Keats condensing his aesthetic appraisal and focusing on the transcendental, non-concrete elements behind things?