Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats uses symbolism in Ode on a Grecian Urn. By using symbolism, Keats makes the vase seem real and alive. Poets and critics say Ode on a Grecian Urn is one of John Keats best poems. Keats language and style of writing makes this poem stand out from most of his other poems. Keats establishes himself by using very detailed sensory images to describe the vase.

John Keats was born in Moorfields, London, England on October 31, 1795. When John Keats was eight years old, his father was killed in a fall in a house. Keats was an apprentice to an apothecary, but he soon realized writing was his true talent. In 1816, Keats devoted himself to poetry. He was nursed by his brother Tom, who was dying from tuberculosis. In fall of 1818, Keats fell in love with Fanny Brawne. Keats died at age 26 in Rome, Italy on February 23, 1821 due to the same sickness his mother and brother died from. John Keats is considered one of the greatest poets of the England language in his twenty five years, three months, and twenty three days of his life.

In the first stanza, the speaker, standing before an ancient Grecian urn, addresses the urn, preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the "still unravish'd bride of quietness," the "foster-child of silence and slow time"(PFS). He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn, and asks what legend they depict, and where they are from. He looks at a picture that seems to depict a group of men pursuing a group of women, and wonders what their story could be.

In the second stanza, the speaker looks at another picture on the urn, this time of a

young man playing a pipe, lying with his lover beneath a glade of trees. The speaker says that the piper's "unheard"(PFS) melody's are sweeter than mortal melodies, because they are unaffected by time. He tells the youth that, though he can never kiss his lover because he is frozen in time, he should not grieve, because her beauty will never fade.

In the third stanza, he looks at the trees surrounding the lovers, and feels happy that they will never shed their leaves; he is happy for the piper because his songs will be "for ever new,"(PFS) and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which slowly turns into "breathing human passion,"(PFS) and eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a "burning forehead, and a parching tongue"(PFS).

In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, this one of a group of villagers leading a heifer to be sacrificed. He wonders where they are going "To what green altar, O mysterious priest..."(PFS), and where they have come from. He imagines their little town, without the villagers, and tells it that its streets wil be silent, for those who left it, frozen on the urn, will never return.

In the last stanza, the speaker again addresses the urn itself, saying that it, like Eternity, "doth tease us out of thought." He thinks that when his generation is long dead, the urn will remain, telling future generations its story or lesson. The final two lines in the

poem "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" "that