JDMcDsblog

Tonight’s Prom Broadcast on BBC Radio 3 included a rare performance of Gustav Holst’s Choral Symphony, and indeed a Proms debut.  The second movement is the most beautiful; a setting of Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” The image of a moment frozen in time yet timeless is given melancholic expression by the haunting phrase;
“heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter”, while we imagine the young man about to steal a kiss,  so near yet so far;
“Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,  
Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve;  
    She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,  
  For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! ”
The poem is almost heart breaking in its reflection of the transitory nature of life; all shall fade except this Attic urn with its “cold pastoral” scene of everyday life from another time and place;

When old age shall this generation waste,  
    Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe  
  Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,  
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all  
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’