ODE TO GRECIAN URN

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” was written in May of 1819 when Keats was 23 years old and was passing through much
emotional turmoil. The “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is Keats’s own “silent form” meant to perform a function — “tease us
out of thought” — as that of the original Greek urn, that, ironically, does not exist. There is smooth transition of ideas
and emotions in the poem starting with:

“Thou still unravished bride of quietness”

Keats addresses the silent urn and asks it the significance of its decorations. Further, Keats addresses the decorations;
their actions remain incomplete but, unlike those of flesh and blood, are permanent. It portrays his attempt to engage
with the static immobility of sculpture. The Grecian urn, passed down through countless centuries to the time of the
speaker's viewing, exists outside of time in the human sense. In the speaker's meditation, this creates an intriguing
paradox for the human figures carved into the side of the urn: They are free from time, but they are simultaneously
frozen in time. They do not have to confront aging and death (their love is "for ever young"), but neither can they have
experience (the youth can never kiss the maiden; the figures in the procession can never return to their homes). The
poet with the urn as he asks questions:

“What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?”

The speaker attempts to engage with scenes on the urn; each time he asks different questions. First, he examines the
picture of the "mad pursuit" and wonders what actual story lies behind the picture: "What men or gods are these?" Of
course, the urn can never tell him the ‘whos’ and ‘whys’ of the stories it depicts, and the speaker is forced to abandon
this line of questioning. Subsequently, he examines the picture of the piper playing to his lover beneath the trees. Here,
the speaker tries to imagine what the experience of the figures on the urn must be like; he tries to identify with them.
He is tempted by their escape from temporality and attracted to the eternal newness of the piper's unheard song and
the eternally unchanging beauty of his lover. He thinks that their love is "far above" all transient human passion, which,
in its sexual expression, inevitably leads to an abatement of intensity--when passion is satisfied, all that remains is a
wearied physicality: a sorrowful heart, a "burning forehead," and a "parching tongue." His recollection of these
conditions seems to remind the speaker that he is inescapably subject to them, and he abandons his attempt to identify
with the figures on the urn. There is a burst in the poet’s emotions and in this ecstasy; he is trying to reach beyond the
physical and perceive the spiritual or ideal as in:

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard”

Keats expresses his willingness to leave his own special approach to experience through the imagination for something
like philosophy and his refusal is based on the belief that the mystery of things can't be mastered by an act of will but
forces us "out of thought," that is, from ordinary ways of thinking into the approach of the imagination. By thought he
means the discursive, puzzled, analytical activity of the intellect. Keats was concerned with the relations of truth and
beauty, and how he developed his own theory about them. This theory maybe expressed in something like the following
form: Truth is another name for ultimate reality, and is discovered not by the reasoning mind but by the imagination.
The imagination has a special insight into the true nature of things, and Keats accepts its discoveries because they agree
with his senses, resolve disagreeable discords, and overwhelm him by their intensity. He is convinced that anything so
discovered is true in a sense that the conclusions of philosophy are not. Keats calls this reality "beauty" because of its
over powering and all-absorbing effect on him. In fact, he substitutes the discovery of beauty through the image (the
discovery of facts through reason), and asserts that it is a more satisfactory and more certain way of piercing to the
heart of things, since inspired insight sees more than abstract ratiocination ever can. Keats concern is with the
imagination in a special sense, and he is not far from Coleridge in his view of it. For him it does much more than imagine
in the ordinary sense; it is an insight so fine that it sees what is concealed from most men and understands things in
their full range and significance and characteristic of the rational of poetry is that through the imagination it finds
something so compelling in its intensity that it is at once both beautiful and real.
Finally, the speaker presents the conclusions drawn from his attempts to engage with the urn. He is overwhelmed by its
existence outside of temporal change, with its ability to "tease" him "out of thought / As doth eternity." If human life is a
succession of "hungry generations," as the speaker suggests in "Nightingale," the urn is a separate, self-contained world.
It can be a "friend to man," as the poet says, but it cannot be mortal; the kind of aesthetic connection the speaker
experiences with the urn is ultimately insufficient to human life. The final two lines, in which the speaker imagines the
urn speaking its message to mankind:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Keats talks about purity. One example of this can be found in these lines, “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not
leave,/ Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare”. The speaker sees a young couple, frozen in time, lounging under a
tree. We see that he is overjoyed, about the limbs of the unchanging tree, “Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot
shed”. The tree that the couple sits beneath has leaves that it will never be lost to the passing seasons. These leaves will
stay with the tree forever, and so will the couple relaxing underneath, with pure simplicity. The couple is youthful and
virtuous, enjoying each other’s company until the end of time.

Permanence is another a key aspect that the speaker makes clear while appreciating the art on the sides of the urn. In a
way he seems envious of the people on the urn, who are frozen in time. In the same sense, the speaker seems relieved
that he does not have to live like this. In the forth stanza, the speaker examines a picture on the urn of a group of
villagers, on their way to sacrifice a cow. “Who are these coming to the sacrifice?/ To what green altar, O mysterious
priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,”. He wonders where they came from and when they will return. They
are stuck in time and their town will forever be empty.

The urn serves as a higher power of knowledge, teaching him as he ponders the pictures on its surface. He even goes on
to call the urn a “Sylvan historian”, who reveals its rustic nature and old age.

Finally the poet talks about the magnificent power of art and its effect on the world. The speaker approaches the ancient
urn with an attitude of discovery and ends up finding more than what was on the surface. He discovers that the most
amazing truths can be found in everyday art. When writing this poem, Keats suggests that in order to find truth, it must
be experienced it in everyday life. The truths in life are found through a personal approach and not through a logical
viewpoint or an argument. Many pictures are frozen in time, which gives us the opportunity to step back and find truths
in the rushing world we live in.

Keats wraps up “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by stating what I believe is his main point of the poem, “’Beauty is truth, truth
beauty,’ - that is all ye know on earth, and all/ ye need to know”. This is the last line of the poem, and it leaves us with a
mysterious, yet awe worthy, satisfaction. Though It may be a mystery to some, after reading the couple lines before, I
have drawn a satisfying answer. “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”. The speaker explains to the reader in these lines, that when you can
not find an answer to the troubles in this world, you can turn to this age old piece of art and it will tell you all you need
to know.