Ode on a Grecian Urn - John Keats - Summary and stanza wise explanation

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty..."

Ode on a Grecian Urn in six ods of John Keats, the speaker addresses the Grecian Urn describing it as a bride of quietness and a child of silence in time. Even though the urn is an inanimate object he also sees it as a kind of historian that has witnessed both Gods and mortals in its lifetime. The speaker asks the urn questions and addresses elements of the urn's fair youth who can't ever leave and the painted tree branches that won't go bare as he says a bold lover seeking a kiss, he notes the act cannot be completed through his generation will grow old and die, the urn will remain in the midst of other woes than ours for generations to come. He imagines the urn observing the beauty and the truth are the same thing and that is all he know on earth and all ye need to know. This is one of Keats' most famous poems, he examines the object first in its entirety and then attends to the specific scenes depicted on it as Keats again visits the theme of immortality versus mortality. The speaker's initial admiring of the object gives way to a meditation on its immortality. The images on the urn frozen in time have far outlasted their creator will outlast the speaker's lifetime too. Each new generation will appreciate the urn's beauty and mystery. Art and stories can provide a sort of immortality to individuals who create them, yet even though the images on the urn will live on. The speaker points out they are stuck in the moment. Wistfulness seems to engulf the speaker upon realizing the urn's immortality, means its figures will never experience future strife, joy or suffering.

'Beauty is truth, truth is beauty...' this simple concept is not only all the humans know but it is all they need to know. Keats alters the poem from merely an observation by the speaker to a possible dialogue between the speaker and the urn. Although the urn holds its silence through the speaker's early interrogation here its seems to convey an answer that's larger than the question he has raised. Another literary device Keats employs is 'Ekphrasis' - Greek word meaning description, its a poet's graphic description of a painting, sculpture or other visual art by verbally depicting the work of art. the poet captures its essence in words and expands its meaning. The focus of the poem is very much on the significance of art and art-making - in particular the relationship between art and reality. The first four stanzas of the poem consist largely of the poet's description of such scenes as he finds and painted in the sides of his imagined Urn.

In this poem Keats speaks directly to the urn throughout the poem, this form of direct address is known as Apostrophe. By the use of this technique in this poem allows the poet to underscore his belief that art communicates with us in a very intimate was and that this is what makes it so valuable.

First Stanza:

Pet begins the poem with a paradox. He addresses the Urn as a bride of quietness and foster child of silence, calling attention to the obviously inarticulate nature of object but then he goes on to assert that the urn is a sylvan historian. Sylvan here referring to a rural or woodland scene – a historian who tells the tale more sweetly than our rhyme meaning poetry. So this apparently silent object actually speaks to us by relating a story in a manner that's actually more powerful than poetry that pre-eminently spoke in the art form. How does it do this? through the pictures painted on its side all of which represents a series of stories. When we look at the scene described in the first stanza, we find that it is indeed a sylvan scene. One taking place in the woods – notice that the legend or story is described as leaf fringed and the reference to Tempe in Arcady are references to wild regions in ancient Greece with many methodological associations - what is taking place here is a kind of ecstatic courtship ritual in which men or Gods engage in a mad pursuit of women who are not particularly receptive to their advances the maidens loathe – note the references to pipe and timbrels or drums which leads us into the next stanza.

Second Stanza:

In a neat parallel to the first stanza the poet begins the second stanza with another paradox. ' Heard melodies are sweet - but those unheard are sweeter...' What can it mean to say that the songs we do not hear sound better than the ones that we do? I.e., your imagination sound better to you than reality, in fact, our imagination routinely presents us with visions of a world superior to our own world, where people treat one another with justice and kindness and so on. This is both the great virtue and the great danger of the imagination it presents us with a vision of an ideal world towards which we can strive but also make us disconnect with reality and thus tuned out of the real-world as we'll see the poet is aware of both of these aspects of the imagination but we can see now an answer to our question beginning to form - what makes art so important? Since each artwork is an active imagination each one offers us the opportunity to glance at a world transcending our own in its perfection. The pictures which fellow the next two stanzas express that ambiguous power of the imagination. The 'Bold lovers' in stanza two is depicted as on the verge of kissing his beloved because he and the woman are frozen in time, she will always be beautiful and he will always be in love with her and yet because he will never actually be able to kiss her he remains eternally deprived of his bliss. The imagined scene is one of timeless youth, beauty and gaiety which nonetheless lacks something essential for the satisfaction of human desire.

Third stanza:

In the same way in the third stanza the trees are described as perpetually in bloom - 'Happy boughs' that cannot shed their leaves and pipe layers described forever new. The love which excludes from the scene that 'Happy Happy Love' lifts our souls far above what poet calls all breathing human passion, the pain and disappointment associated with desire which the poet was referring to. In the final two lines of the stanza, by being lifted out of the realm of human desire and the heartache which necessarily accompanies such desires, we are freed at least momentarily from the hardships of life, but we are also in danger floating off into a realm of delusive unreality and losing mental contact with the world we actually do inhabit. This is the danger inherent in escapism.

Fourth Stanza:

The fourth stanza describes a ritual sacrifice of a cow heifer lowing at the sky, perhaps suggesting something about the sacredness involved in art, something Keats believed in strongly.

Fifth Stanza:

In the final stanza where the poet attempts to state the value of art most explicitly and it's here perhaps as a result that the language of the poem becomes most elusive and debatable. The figure on the urn are referred to as marble men and maidens and the whole scene is called 'Cold pastoral'. The emphasis is on the unreality of the picture, their lack of warmth, their lack of flesh and blood. Precisely at this point in the poem that the artwork speaks most explicitly to us saying in the famous concluding lines -

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all

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