Ode on a Grecian Urn John Keats’s poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is about the images that are on the urn. The narrator comments on each of the several scenes that are illustrated on the urn. He says that the painting is silent and does not change. What is painted on the urn is there forever. In its never-changing aspect, all the people stay fair and young, untouched by time. However, they cannot fulfill what they want to in life. Although people get old, the urn itself will remain. The urn teaches us that all we can do in life is to appreciate beauty and to be aware. The narrator’s idea of living in the eternal world of the illustrations on the urn changes from excitement at the beginning of the poem to nervousness at the end. At first, the narrator is fascinated by never-changing nature of the urn. He is amazed and describes each scene. The first scene tells a story through pictures that is set in Greece, either in Tempe or Arcady. The narrator asks many questions. He wonders whether the images represent men or gods. He also wonders what is going on in the illustration and whether it is a scene of pursuit, struggle, or ecstasy. The second scene is that of a young man playing the pipe beneath the trees. The man is similar to the leaves on the tree in that they are both fixed in time and will never die. The songs of this “happy melodist” and the “happy boughs” of the tree will live forever. The third scene is of a young lover who is very close to kissing his maiden. His maiden will stay young and beautiful forever and their love will continue endlessly. The last scene is an image of people approaching an altar to sacrifice a cow. These people leave their town to come participate in the sacrifice. The narrator wonders which town these people come from. The narrator’s initial fascination with the urn turns to nervousness when he realizes the setback encountered by each scene. The questions that he asks about the first scene will go unanswered. He will never know whether the images represent men or gods, or whether the activity is of pursuit, struggle, or ecstasy. The urn is silent. It cannot speak and it will not answer his questions. The melodies of the young man playing the pipe in the second scene will go unheard. They have no tone. The trees will never be bare because the urn is stuck in springtime. The kiss between the young man and his maiden in the third scene will never happen. They will stay in their positions forever, and their love will never be fulfilled. Lastly, the people in the fourth scene are frozen in time and cannot return to their hometown. “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.” Although people get old, the urn itself will remain. People perish, but the urn is timeless and unchangeable. In the beginning of the poem, the narrator seems to envy the never-changing nature of the urn and its ability to withstand time. By the end of the poem, however, he realizes that the illustrations on the urn are missing out on life experiences. The people painted on the urn may have the advantage of lasting eternally, but they lack the ability to live. They cannot gain experience, they cannot accomplish anything, and they cannot fulfill any goals. The urn teaches us that beauty and truth are equivalent. Beauty is truth and truth is beauty. All we can do in this life is appreciate beauty. If we can appreciate beauty, then we can know truth.
The theme being explored is journey. The particular types of journeys that I am interested in are journeys about people appreciating life as they get older due to their awareness of time. I chose to include the poem “Ode on a Grecian Urn” because of its depiction of time. Even though we may wish time would stop, we should know that the passing of time is what makes life all the more precious. We should not try to grasp eternity. We are not meant to live forever, as the urn does in the poem. Rather, we must learn to appreciate the limited time that we have on this earth.