ODE ON A GRECIAN URN – JOHN KEATS

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN – JOHN KEATS

The ancient Greeks used to cremate the dead and deposit the ashes in an urn which is then buried. An urn was a generally made of marble or of brass and often the surface of such Urn’s are decorated with beautiful scenes and situations. Keats has discovered such an ancient beautiful marble urn in the British Museum and he was inspired to compose this poem.

Keats addresses the Grecian Urn as an ‘unravished bride of quietness and a foster-child of silence and slow time’. Thus Keats conveys to us the idea of the silent repose and the great age of this piece of Greek sculpture. He also calls the Grecian urn a ‘Sylvan historian’ because of the rural and forest scenes are carved on its surface. He poses a series of questions, which are able to give us vivid pictures referring human beings, gods, beautiful valleys, lovers in passionate mood, and flute players playing wild and ecstasy.

The poet goes on to say about the music of the flute-players depicted on the Grecian urn cannot be actually heard but to be imagined. ‘Unheard melodies are sweeter than heard melodies’. These unheard melodies are sweeter than the melodies that we actually heard. Besides the flute players, on the other side of the urn a lover who is trying to kiss his beloved on the urn will always be seen in the same mood of passion. In the real life, love and beauty decline and fade, but the love and beauty depicted on the urn will remain fresh and forever.

In the other side of the urn the season of spring is depicted. In real life, spring is very short, after the season the trees must shed their leaves and become bare. Similarly, in real life a musician will at least feel tired of playing music and will stop for while. The enjoyment of the pleasures of love in real life is followed by disgust and satiety. But the trees depicted on the urn never shed their leaves, the melodist will never stop his tunes and the heart of the lovers will always throb with passion while the beauty of the beloved will never fade.

Then follows another picture of a crowd of people is going to some place of worship. A priest leads a heifer which has been decorated with garlands and that is to be offered as a sacrifice. The worshipers have come from some little town situated close to a river or on a sea-shore or at the foot of a hill on which stands a fortress. The town which is been emptied of its people, will always remain desolate, because the people shown on the urn will always be seen going away to the place of worship but never returning to the town. 

The poet then addresses the urn as ‘Attic shape’, ‘Fair attitude’, and ‘Cold pastoral’. These expressions convey the beauty and the poise of the urn and also refer to the rural scenes depicted on it. The urn awakens overwhelming feelings in the poet’s mind when he thinks of its eternity. The urn, says Keats, will always a friend to man. The generations of men will come and pass, and will perhaps undergo sufferings and sorrows of which we have no notion at present. But the urn will have a valuable message for generations namely, Beauty is Truth and Truth Beauty. The knowledge of this great fact is of supreme importance and this fact represents the essence of wisdom. Having this knowledge, mankind needs no other knowledge.

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