ODE
ON A GRECIAN URN
John Keats
John
Keats is one of the celebrated romantic poets.
He occupies a unique position in English poetry as the lover and
worshipper o beauty. He is a poet of
sensations. The poem Ode on a Grecian Urn is written by John Keats
in the form of an ode. In this poem
Keats emphasizes that art is permanent and has a lasting beauty.
John
Keats calls the urn a bride of quietness. Though the urn is wedded to
quietness, it tells the tale of Greek life in ancient time through the pictures. The urn is not the child of passion but an
adopted child of silence and slow time.
The urn is addressed as a sylvan historian as it records the rustic
beauty truthfully. The poet wonders
whether scene depicted on the urn represents life in the vale of Tempe or the
life in the dales of Arcady. He also
asks whether the figures carved on the urn are those of men or of gods or of
both.
The
poet notices three scenes engraved on the urn – a fair youth playing a pipe, a
tree that shelters him and a lover who tries to kiss his beloved. The poet says that the music of the pipes
played on the urn is more pleasing than any song heard by the sensual ear. The youth playing the pipe will never stop
playing and the tree will never shed their leaves. Similarly, the lover can never kiss his
beloved and hence his love for her will never diminish.
Then
the poet describes a procession of men to a holy place. An unknown priest is leading a heifer to the
altar. The poet wonders from which town
the people have come to witness the sacrifice.
It could be a town near a river or sea or on a mountain. But he is sure that the town will remain
empty and silent for ever.
The
poet addresses the beautiful urn and says that with its beauty and silence the
urn baffles the human mind. The urn is a
pastoral poem in marble. Even when this
generation passes away, the urn will remain as it has remained for
centuries. Like a prophet, the urn will
prophesize the message that beauty is truth and truth is beauty.
