Keats Ode to a Grecian Urn

I feel that to Keats the urn holds wisdom, knowledge and/or history. Keats speaks of gods, humans, love, happiness, death, and truth. All of those things could easily fit into wisdom, knowledge and history. While the urn could not really give someone knowledge it could truly provide history with the artwork on the outside of it. While providing history the urn could open ones eyes to something they were not seeing before.

In the first stanza, Keats talks of a legend that haunts the urn. It could be from gods or humans. Keats goes on to question, “What men or gods are these?” It is possible that he believes that the history or legend as Keats called it, may have had a struggle to escape. It could be as simple as someone studying the urn to understand the history that it stands for. In many countries there is artwork that details the history of their people. This could be one representation of the urn in stanza one.

In the second stanza, Keats speaks of a piper sitting under some trees that is painted on the urn. Keats imagines that the musician believes in ever lasting love and that it is eternal. In the third stanza, Keats decides to forget these thoughts and move away from what he feels he cannot grasp or really understand.

Stanza four has Keats looking at the urn as he sees a crowd coming to a sacrifice. Keats wonders if the people came from a close town and would they be able to return. Keats can’t help but wonder if the town will be forever deserted and where did they come from. There is no mention on the urn what town the people came from but it is possible that whoever painted the history onto the urn would know where the townsfolk came from.

In the last stanza, Keats feels as though the urn is teasing him. While he states that the urn is teasing he believes that it can be a “friend to man”. After saying this, Keats says that, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”. I can’t help but think that this helps solidify the fact that Keats may think that the urn is so much more than decoration, that is does in some way hold knowledge in some way whether it is someone studying the artwork on it to realize the history.

The last two lines, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know” are my favorite. I believe it ties into the very first stanza and how Keats speaks of a legend that the urn may hold. At the same time maybe Keats means to be truthful to everyone. If you are truthful it is a beautiful thing but if you tell a lie it is not. Perhaps the urn holds truth because it may hold history of what has happened and Keats is saying that it is a beautiful thing.

http://www.suite101.com/content/ode-on-a-grecian-urn-a18523

http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/section4.rhtml