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Word Gems
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John Keats
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Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
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!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
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."
from https://www.litcharts.com/poetry/john-keats/ode-on-a-grecian-urn
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written by the influential English poet John Keats in 1819. It is a complex, mysterious poem with a disarmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. These scenes fascinate, mystify, and excite the speaker in equal measure—they seem to have captured life in its fullness, yet are frozen in time. The speaker's response shifts through different moods, and ultimately the urn provokes questions more than it provides answers. The poem's ending has been and remains the subject of varied interpretation. The urn seems to tell the speaker—and, in turn, the reader—that truth and beauty are one and the same. Keats wrote this poem in a great burst of creativity that also produced his other famous odes (e.g. "Ode to a Nightingale"). Though this poem was not well-received in Keats' day, it has gone on to become one of the most celebrated in the English language.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Summary
The speaker directly addresses the urn, deeming it a pure partner of quietness itself as well as the adopted child of silence and vast lengths of time. The urn is a historian of rural scenes, which it depicts better than does the poetry of the speaker's era (or perhaps language more generally). The speaker wonders what stories are being told by the images on the urn; whether the figures it depicts are human beings or gods, and which part of Greece they are in. The speaker wonders about the specific identity of the male characters and the reluctant-looking women. Do the scenes show a chase and an attempt to escape? Noting the musical instruments on the urn, the speaker questions if the scenes on display represent some kind of delirious revelry.
The speaker praises music, but claims that music that cannot be heard (like that on the urn) is even better. As such, the speaker implores the urn's pipes to keep playing—not for sensory reward, but in tribute to silence. The speaker focuses a young piper sitting under some trees; just as the piper can never stop playing his song—as he is frozen on the urn—so too the trees will never shed their leaves. The speaker then focuses on a scene that depicts two young lovers. Though they are nearly kissing, their lips can never meet. The speaker tells them not to be upset, however: though the kiss will never happen, the man and woman will always love one another (or the man will always love the woman), and the woman will always be beautiful.
The speaker now addresses the images of trees on the urn, calling their boughs happy because they will never lose their leaves, and they will never have to say goodbye to spring. The speaker then returns to the piper, whom they perceive as happy and untiring—the piper will play new music for the rest of time. This fills the speaker with thoughts of happiness and love. The figures on the urn will always have happiness to look forward to, always be out of breath from the chase, and always be young. All the passions of the living human world are far removed from the figures on the urn—and these passions cause heartache, lovesick fevers, and thirst.
The speaker turns their attention to another scene on the urn, which appears to depict a ceremonial progression. They notice the figure of a shadowy priest leading a cow, which is mooing towards the sky and is dressed with ceremonial silks and flowers. This image causes the speaker to wonder where those in the procession have come from—which town by the river, coast, or mountain has fallen quiet because they have left on this religiously significant morning? The speaker directly addresses this unknown town, acknowledging that its streets are frozen forever in silence. There is no one left who can explain why the town is empty.
The speaker takes a more zoomed-out look at the urn, noting its shape and apparent attitude. They recap the urn's population of pictorial men and women and its depictions of nature. To the speaker, the urn seems to offer a temporary respite from thought, in the same way that eternity does. But this respite seems inhuman or false, leading the speaker to call the urn cold. Inspired by this sentiment, the speaker notes that, when everyone in their generation has died, the urn will still be around. It will become an object of contemplation for people with different problems than the speaker's generation. To them, the urn will say that beauty and truth are one and the same; this fact is all that it is possible to know, and all that anybody actually needs to know.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Themes
Theme Mortality
Mortality
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a complex meditation on mortality. Death preoccupies the speaker, who responds by seeming to both celebrate and dread the fleeting nature of life. The scenes on the urn depict a Classical world that has long since passed—and yet, in being fixed on the urn itself, these scenes also evoke a sense of immortality. The urn is therefore a contradiction—its scenes speak of vibrant humanity and, because they are frozen in time, seem to represent a kind of eternal life. At the same time, everything and everyone in the urn’s world is no more. Sensing this contradiction, the poem can be read as a process of response, in which the speaker tries to make sense of mortality—both that of others and their own—without ever coming to a comfortable resolution.
Importantly, one of the main purposes served by an urn was to hold the ashes of the dead. Though it can’t be said definitively that this is the sort of urn Keats had in mind when writing this poem, he would no doubt have been aware of this as a possible interpretation. The urn is the sole object of contemplation in the poem, and accordingly death—and the fleeting nature of human life—is present from the beginning.
The speaker projects their anxiously shifting thoughts about mortality onto the urn, which seems to stand for both life and death at the same time. At points in the poem, the pictures on the urn seem to come alive for the speaker. Stanzas 2 and 3 are full of praise for the scenes at hand, in which the urn’s figures appear blissful and carefree. Lovers at play, pipe-playing musicians, and bountiful nature all create a “happy, happy” feeling in the speaker. Here, then, the speaker celebrates life, and the scenes frozen on the urn represent a kind of victory of life over death. Indeed, the speaker praises the lovers on the urn as “For ever panting, and for ever young,” and notes that the tree beneath which they sit will never “be bare.”
But the pictures on the urn are ultimately just that—pictures. All the lives depicted by the urn—and the maker of the urn itself—are long gone. They only seem alive because they are rendered so well, performing actions that speak of vitality and humanity yet are not themselves full of life. What’s more, though the maiden depicted “cannot fade,” neither can her lover have “thy bliss”—that is, he can never kiss her in his frozen state. This complicates anxiety about the inevitable march of time, given that to stop time essentially stops not just death, but life as well. Mortality is thus presented not simply as an end to but also a distinct part of life.
This realization dawns on the speaker through the course of the poem. Arguably, this is marked when the speaker introduces their own mortality in line 8 of stanza 3: “All breathing human passion far above.” This moment brings to mind the speaker’s own breath settling on the object of contemplation. To breathe is to be alive—and to be reminded, in this case, of inevitable death.
From this point onwards, the poem becomes less celebratory and more anxious. The busy scenes on the urn seem to speak of an emptiness intimately linked to mortality. In stanza 4, for example, the speaker is vexed by the fact that the people depicted on the urn can never return to their “desolate” hometown.
By the poem’s close, the urn becomes “cold” to the speaker—that is, its inanimate quality offers no lasting comfort to the speaker’s contemplation of mortality. Ultimately, the speaker turns this realization on their own generation, which will be laid to “waste” by “old age.” The speaker, then, grapples with the question of mortality throughout the poem. At first, the beauty of the urn seems to bring its characters back to life, as the stillness of the images makes their lives immortal. Eventually, though, reality sets in, and the urn makes mortality all the more present and undeniable.
Theme Art, Beauty, and Truth
Art, Beauty, and Truth
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” examines the close relationship between art, beauty, and truth. For the speaker, it is through beauty that humankind comes closest to truth—and through art that human beings can attain this beauty (though it remains a bittersweet achievement). At its heart, the poem admits the mystery of existence—but argues that good art offers humankind an essential, if temporary, way of representing and sensing this mystery.
The poem’s famous ending is vital to understanding the speaker’s position on art, beauty, and truth, and contextualizes the lines that have come before. The speaker’s concluding sentiment—"Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—demonstrates that, in the context of this poem, beauty and truth are one and the same. Art’s role is to create this beauty and truth, but the speaker doesn’t present beauty and truth as clearly definable aspects of human existence. The speaker feels this connection intuitively—and the one-way conversation with the urn, and what it represents, is an attempt to make sense of these intuitions.
The speaker does, however, foreground the aesthetics of the urn throughout the poem, and matches the seductive beauty of the object with a sensuous and delicately crafted linguistic beauty of its own. Though the poem cannot—and doesn’t try to—pin down the precise relationship between art, beauty, and truth, its language works hard to be beautiful and to demonstrate that beauty is something valuable and essential to humankind. As one example of this above, the way the gentle /f/ sound in “soft pipes” seems to make the /p/ sound of “pipes” itself become quieter. Just as the maker of the urn tried to give an authentic and beautiful account of the world in which it was made, the poem tries to bring “truth” and “beauty” to its rendering of the urn.
The poem, then, offers no easy answer to the question of the relationship between art, beauty, and truth. But it does argue unequivocally that these three are co-dependent, essential to one another. Furthermore, it may be that the strength of this relationship is partly dependent on its mystery. Perhaps “All ye need to know,” then, suggests people need to be comfortable in not knowing too. The last lines, taken out of context, might suggest that this is a poem in praise of beauty. Yet the speaker’s position is ultimately much more nuanced. The inanimateness of the urn’s scenes becomes representative of humankind’s desire to represent itself and its world.
Whether or not people can achieve lasting beauty through art, the speaker feels deeply the importance of trying. With the urn’s scenes frozen in time, the melodies of the pipes cannot be heard, the trees cannot shed their leaves, and the people walking can never arrive at their ceremony. In short, everything is paused in eternity. This means that the beautiful sound of the pipes is, in fact, a kind of silence. The scenes thus become not just pictures of human life, but also abstract representations of beauty—they are pure beauty, untainted by having to actually exist or eventually die. If beauty is something to be aspired to, as the last lines seem to suggest, then the beauty of the urn is more absolute because it represents the idea of beauty itself—not just an attempt to make it. The poem, then, takes on a complex philosophical quality, considering beauty both as something that has to be aspired to by humans and as an abstract concept that perhaps ultimately lies out of human reach.
Theme History and the Imagination
History and the Imagination
In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker makes a powerful effort to bring history to life. The poem functions as a kind of conversation, between an early 19th century speaker on the one hand and Ancient Greece on the other. Of course, this conversation can only really happen in one direction—it is up to the speaker to imagine the lives and stories that, though once real, now only exist in the urn’s pictures. Overall, the poem argues that imagination is key to understanding and sympathizing with what has come before—but that this effort can never give a full picture of the richness and detail of worlds that are long gone.
Part of the speaker’s fascination with the urn is that it is a genuine historical object that was created around the time of historical moment that it depicts. The craftsmanship of the urn, combined with sheer luck, has allowed a small part of the history that it embodies to survive for millennia. The speaker foregrounds the importance of objects in relation to history by calling the urn a “Sylvan [rural] historian,” instantly drawing a link between the speaker’s own historical moment and the urn’s and noting that the urn has survived as a “foster-child of silence and slow time.” The speaker thus emphasizes both the immense length of time in which the urn has existed but also its “silent,” inanimate quality. That is, without an effort of the imagination on the part of the viewer, the urn itself says nothing about history. The poem thus partly becomes a real-time example of this effort to actively engage with the past.
Eventually, the speaker finds the urn to be “cold”; it cannot satisfy the speaker’s desire to bring the ancient world back to life. That, of course, doesn’t mean the effort is wasted. Just as the urn itself could never give a full account of the world at the time it was made, neither could the speaker truly hope to get a full sense of history through the urn.
Nevertheless, a feel for the world of Ancient Greece—however in complete—has been achieved. The imaginative work of the speaker brings the imagination of the reader to life, and an atmosphere of a particular point in history is therefore brought to life too. The cow being led to the sacrifice, for example, seems to both ground the action of the urn in Ancient Greece and bring it momentarily to life—the speaker imagines the cow lowing towards the sky, a detail that seems specifically aimed at making the scenario more vibrant and present for the reader.
The poem acknowledges that no generation can ever have a full account of the world as it was before. Objects and imagination, though, help to tell history’s stories. And just as the urn allowed the speaker to explore this subject within the form of the poem, the poem itself becomes an object that allows its readers to explore both the historical atmosphere of the urn and get a sense for the 19th century moment in which the poem was written; the Romantic poets had a deep interest in the Classical world, and this ode shows a speaker trying to make sense of the relationship between those two distinct historical moments.
No object—whether an urn or a written account—can ever bring a historical moment into the present to be experienced in full detail. But objects together with the imagination do help to bring stories of the past to life, and it is in these stories that one generation relates to those that came before. The urn’s world as described in the poem is full of human activity that felt familiar in the 19th century and still feels familiar now; history and the imagination therefore help humankind to relate to its past, and see what one moment has in common with the next.
Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Lines 1-4
The opening lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" establish the poem as a work of ekphrasis—that is, writing about an art object. They also quickly set up the poem as a direct address between the speaker and the personified urn. Throughout the poem, the urn fascinates and confuses the speaker in equal measure.
The first four lines show the speaker at a point of relative calm, before the contemplation of the object has provoked any major intellectual dilemma. They represent the starting point of the engagement between speaker and object, and begin with three metaphorical descriptions of the urn.
The basic implication of line 1's metaphor suggests that the urn has an intimate relationship with quietness—that is, quietness is its usual companion. The urn, most likely spending most of its time sitting dormant in a museum, usually exists in a space of non-interaction. It takes on meaning when people look at it, causing them to contemplate its scenes—for this speaker, these scenes go on to bring about thoughts on a wide range of subjects: art, humanity, history, and so on.
That said, museums are often cathedral-like spaces and accordingly these observer-object interactions are often quiet too. The "still" in line 1 functions with two meanings—the urn is "still" because it is inanimate, but it is also "still"—after all this time—wedded to quietness. The use of "unravish'd" suggests that something about the urn remains unconsummated, though as yet the poem hasn't given enough to make clear what that might be—perhaps to be "ravish'd" in this situation would mean to be destroyed, and the speaker is therefore remarking on the sheer amount of time that the urn has survived (somewhere in the region of 2000 years).
The second line develops the idea of quietness by suggesting the urn is somehow parented by "silence" and "slow time." Perhaps it is suggested here that the original parents of the urn were the artist who made it and the contemporary experience the artist was trying to render. Now, the urn is in the care of "silence" and "slow time." The latter phrase also has suggestions of being made of the earth—if the urn is made from clay, for example, then its physical form relies on organic processes that take a long time to develop ("slow" geological time). The sibilance of lines 1-3 is also an attempt to "ssh" the inner ear of the reader, emphasizing the slowness and silence that are being discussed.
Line 3 demonstrates that the speaker begins the poem by feeling that the urn can teach its observers something about the world in which it was made (Ancient Greece). The poem is in large part about whether this statement is true—what can people learn about the past from its objects? The speaker suggests that the urn is better equipped to tell its story than poetry.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Symbols
Symbol Music
Music
Music is a symbol of human activity and creativity that occurs throughout the poem. It is first gestured to in line 10, and then occupies a prominent position in the second and third stanzas.
As with the other symbols of human life present on the urn, the music here is a paradox. Because the urn is a silent, inanimate object, the music depicted by it can never be heard. Initially, the speaker takes this as a representation of the potential of art and its central role in creating a meaningful world. The piper in stanza 2 is frozen in a state of ultimate potential—both playing and not playing—that both stand for the idea of perfection in art and the impossibility of attaining this perfection. This isn't to do with a musician playing badly or well; it's the fact that the piper's song is locked in eternity that evokes such strong feeling in the speaker.
Throughout the poem, as the speaker becomes increasingly vexed by thoughts about mortality, the musician functions as a kind of stand-in for the speaker—both figures are engaged in the act of creation (the speaker is creating the poem, the piper is creating music). The speaker senses that contained within their act of creation, however, is that same creation's destruction: whatever meaning they create will eventually turn to "waste." The musician, frozen in time and able to produce only silent "music," embodies this contradiction.
Furthermore, the discussion of music contrasts with the presence of silence that begins in the first line of the poem and continues throughout. Music is the organized patterning of sound, a way of physically writing on the air waves—the urn cannot answer the questions posed by the speaker, remaining quiet in a way that is at odds with the function of music.
Symbol Nature
Nature
The scenes on the urn are "pastoral"—that is, they are specifically situated within nature as opposed to a city. The natural world ties the speaker to the ancient Greek world they observe on the urn's surface: though these are two very different times, the earth's natural environment in which they are both situated is largely the same (allowing for the differences in population and city sizes, etc.). This suggests nature, in part, as symbolic of "slow time" itself, of the passage of time beyond human life spans and comprehension.
The speaker introduces natural imagery in lines 3 to 5 of stanza 1, and expands on it during stanzas 2, 3 and 4. As with the musical activity portrayed on the urn, the natural world is depicted in a moment of stasis that contrasts with the vitality of nature itself. The trees never being able to shed their leaves is both a symbol of eternity and of transience. In the world of the urn, the trees are frozen in a particular season—but the speaker, and the reader, know that this is not how the natural world functions. Seasonality is a marker of time, and representative of the ever-changing nature of life itself. The particular season in question here, spring, is associated with new life and the bountiful overflow of natural growth. Likewise, it has connotations of love and lust. The natural world is thus a cyclical space wherein change—and, implicitly, death—are essential to the creation of new life. The presence of frozen natural imagery on the urn underscores that while death and time are absent from the urn, so too is the potential for genuine life.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language
Apostrophe
Apostrophe is present in the poem from its very first line. The speaker directly addresses the urn, calling it "thou," and continues to do so throughout. This sets the poem up as a kind of interrogation, in this case of an inanimate object. Generally speaking, the entire poem is in this mode. The apostrophe is also a traditional function of the ode form.
The use of apostrophe throughout the poem emphasizes the one-way nature of the conversation taking place. Setting aside the last two lines, the poem is populated by direct, unanswered (and unanswerable) questions and concerns. Apostrophe often gives the reader a guide to the speaker's mood as they go about this interrogation. "Bold Lover," for example, presents a moment in which the speaker views the urn's figures as possessing a certain kind of strength by virtue of their permanent stillness. By the end, however, the poet calls the urn "Cold Pastoral!" This shows the shift in mood, with the speaker growing frustrated that the urn cannot respond to their investigations.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Vocabulary
Thou Unravish'd Sylvan Canst Thy Tempe Dales Arcady Loth Mad Pipes Timbrels Ditties Fair Bliss Wilt Adieu High-sorrowful Cloy'd Parching Heifer Drest Citadel Attic Brede Dost Doth Pastoral Say'st
Thou is an archaic form of "you," the second person pronoun.
Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Form
As the title suggests, this poem is an ode. The ode is a verse form which dates back to Ancient Greece. Keats's choice of form, then, fits perfectly with the object of contemplation—a verse form that harks back to an ancient world to match with an object made in the same era. Keats's poem consists of five stanzas, each with 10 lines.
In its original form, the ode was often celebratory; this ode is markedly different in tone, however. Likewise, Keats's poem does not fit into the more traditional formats originally established for odes (the Homeric and Pindaric). Keats developed his ode form because he felt that the other established forms did not quite fit what he wanted his poems to do. This poem is an inquiry and interrogation which the sonnet, for example, would not be able to accommodate. The ode form allows for a more prolonged examination of the urn, and gives space to raise doubts and questions.
One other point worth noting is that odes, in the classical era, were generally sung and/or accompanied by music and dance. Music features in the images of the urn, but the poem is characterized by the "quietness" and "silence" with which the urn responds to the speaker. There is therefore a kind of gentle irony at play in Keats's choice of form—a musical tradition here expressing a kind of noiselessness.
Meter
The meter in the poem is generally a finely-wrought iambic pentameter. The stresses are well-controlled throughout, establishing a refinement of craft that deliberately mirrors the craftsmanship that went into making the urn itself. Just as the skill that went into the urn is disappeared by its immediate beauty, so too the poem hides its metrical form by virtue of the careful attention with which it is rendered.
Line 8 is an example of perfect iambic pentameter:
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
There are, of course, some deliberate variations of the iambic pentameter throughout. Line 11, for example, can be scanned as a spondaic first foot:
Heard melodies
This emphasizes the audibility of the melodies in question, turning up the metrical volume. Likewise, the spondee at the start of line 17 emphasizes the lover's boldness.
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss
To be sure, this sense of boldness is then undercut in the same line as the speaker forcefully repeats "never," followed by "canst." The meter in this moment reflects the contradiction between vitality and mortality in the poem; however vivacious the lover may seem, he is, in fact, still frozen in time on the urn, and thus not really alive at all.
Rhyme Scheme
The rhyme scheme keeps a generally consistent shape throughout "Ode on a Grecian Urn." Each stanza can be divide into two parts in terms of its rhymes. They all begin with ABAB in the first 4 lines, though the subsequent 6 lines of the stanzas differ as follows:
Stanzas 1 and 5:
ABABCDEDCE
Stanza 2:
ABABCDECED
Stanzas 3 and 4:
ABABCDECDE
This general division into 4 lines and 6 lines can be interpreted as textual representation of the shape of a Greek urn, which is generally narrower/smaller at the top than it is at the bottom:
Another point of note is the way in which the variations in the 6-line sections of the rhyme scheme are resolved in the fifth and final stanza. In this concluding stanza, the poem returns to the exact same format as the first stanza, suggesting the somewhat cyclical nature of the poem. The speaker started on a point of mystery and longing for knowledge, and ends on a similar note.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Speaker
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" doesn't explicitly state who its speaker is, though it is often taken to be John Keats himself. There isn't enough evidence to equate the thoughts in the poem with those of Keats, but that isn't to say that there aren't some clues along the way. The inquisitive speaker uses a telling phrase in line 4—"our rhyme"—to express the idea that the urn captures its "flowery tale" better than the poets of the day. It therefore makes sense to think of the speaker as especially interested in the comparison between ancient Greek art and the poetry of the 19th century (and readers might well take this as evidence of Keats as the speaker).
After the speaker has imaginatively entered into the urn's world, stanza 5, particularly lines 45 to 46, brings a dose of reality. Here, the urn appears suddenly cold and indifferent, and reminds the speaker of the mortality of their own generation.
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” Setting
The setting in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is not explicitly stated, but it's clear that the speaker is looking at an urn. This might suggest a museum context, which would fit with the idea of "silence" that surrounds the urn and makes sense given that Keats was known to spend time inside the British Museum, where many items from antiquity are stored and displayed.
That said, the main setting of the poem is the urn itself. The speaker is enchanted and entranced by the urn, and for a few brief moments enters into its world. The urn itself depicts a bucolic countryside scene, or series of scenes, which contrast with the presumably metropolitan location in which it is stored. Part of the poem's philosophical dilemma is the fact that the setting is hard to quantify—the speaker wants to know the who, what, and especially the where of the urn's pictures, but can only bring them to life through the imagination. The other main facet of the setting, then, is the speaker's own mind.
Literary and Historical Context of “Ode on a Grecian Urn”
Literary Context
John Keats is now one of the most celebrated poets in the English language, and this one of his most celebrated poems. In his own lifetime, however, Keats struggled for recognition, overshadowed by more successful poets like William Wordsworth. This poem was written in an astonishing burst of creativity during the spring of 1819, during which Keats also wrote his other odes (except for "To Autumn," written in September of the same year).
Keats is generally considered a key member of the Romantic poets, in particular of the second generation which included writers like Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Romanticism doesn't mean the same thing as "romantic"—instead, it is characterized, loosely speaking, by a deep-rooted belief in the power of the imagination, the prophetic role of poetry in society, the importance of nature, and political engagement. Keats's writing was not well received during his lifetime, and he was the victim of snobbery from those who considered him to be an intellectual and artistic imposter. However, his reputation quickly rose in the centuries after his death in 1821 from tuberculosis at the age of just 25.
Historical Context
Keats wrote this poem not long after the American Revolution of 1776 and the French Revolution in 1789, which facilitated Napoleon's rise to power. The early 19th century can be considered a period of reappraisal in terms of the way the individual relates to society. The influential poet/critic William Wordsworth was particularly interested in the idea of civil liberties, though became more conservative as he grew older.
Perhaps what's most interesting about this poem historically speaking is the very deliberate attempt by the poet to reengage with the ancient past in the hope of learning from it. This was part of an overall resurgence in interest in the history and artifacts from classical antiquity (ancient Greece and Rome). Keats's poem was notably written less than a century after the opening of the British Museum. The observation and contemplation of objects from other cultures was becoming an increasing popular activity, and was founded on the far-reaching power of the British Empire. The ethical debate about the practice of institutions like the British Museum continues to day, with the Greek government still trying to find a way to return the Elgin Marbles—a collection of classical sculptures—to their country of origin.
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