Ode on a Grecian Urn   (Greek)

By John Keats

John Keats (1795-1821) was an English Romantic poet known for his vivid imagery and sensuous style. Despite his short life, he produced some of the most celebrated works in English literature. Keats’ poetry explores themes of beauty, mortality, and the transient nature of life. His work, often marked by melancholy, has had a profound influence on later poets and continues to be revered.

The poem explores the timeless beauty and stillness captured on an ancient urn, contrasting it with the fleeting nature of human life. Through vivid imagery and reflection, Keats meditates on the relationship between art, beauty, and truth, ultimately concluding with the famous lines: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The poem is celebrated for its rich language and philosophical depth.

Text of the poem:

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,                                          (pure, chaste)

      Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express                           (relating to woods/forests)

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape

Of deities or mortals, or of both,                                   (gods)

               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?                         (name of places in Greece)

What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard

Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,

Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:

Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave

Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;

               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,

               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;

And, happy melodist, unwearied,                              (without being tired)

         For ever piping songs for ever new;

More happy love! more happy, happy love!

         For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

All breathing human passion far above,

         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,                    (over-satiated)

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.                  (dry, very thirsty)

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?

         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,

Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,

         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?

What little town by river or sea shore,

         Or mountain-built Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?

And, little town, thy streets for evermore

         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell

Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.

O Atticshape! Fair attitude! with brede       (carved with the shapes of Attica, like a braid)

         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

         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.”

Ode on a Grecian Urn was written by John Keats in 1819. It is a complex, mysterious poem with a simple setup. An undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. These scenes fascinate, mystify, and excite the speaker equally and it seems to him that they have captured life in its fullness but they are frozen time. The speaker’s response shifts through different moods, and ultimately the urn provokes questions more than it provides answers. The poem’s ending has been and remains the subject of varied interpretations. The urn seems to tell the speaker- and, in turn, the reader-that truth and beauty are the same. Keats wrote this poem in a great burst of creativity that also produced his other famous odes. Though this poem was not well received in Keats’ day, it has gone on to become one of the most celebrated in the English language.

Summary of the Poem

In the first stanza of the poem, the speaker addresses the urn and calls it an ‘unravished bride’ and ‘Sylvan historian’. He is preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. He describes the urn as a “historian” that can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn and asks what legend they depict and from where they come. 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: “What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? / What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

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” melodies 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 “forever new,” and happy that the love of the boy and the girl will last forever, unlike mortal love, which lapses into “breathing human passion” and eventually vanishes, leaving behind only a “burning forehead, and a parching tongue.”

In the fourth stanza, the speaker examines another picture on the urn, 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…”) and from where they have come. He imagines their little town, empty of all its citizens, and tells it that its streets will “for evermore” be silent, for those who have left it, frozen on the urn, will never return. In the final 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 enigmatic lesson: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty.” The speaker says that that is the only thing the urn knows and the only thing it needs to know.