John Keats, a poet who attained extraordinary achievement for his short lifetime, was born the son of a London stableman. He grew up in relative poverty compared to many of the other poets of this time. Keats lived to be only 24 years old and his writing career lasted only five years.
One of his most read ode’s, is “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Keats does three things in this ode to attempt to convey his thoughts: he uses a series of paradoxes in the poem to contrast the differences between the mortal life portrayed in the art on the urn and the frozen permanence of the urn itself, he makes use of a narrator who speaks to the urn and asks questions of both the urn and of the reader to show the mystery of the urn’s art, and he also makes use positive and negative wording of the language in this poem to show his underlying feelings on the subject of the poem.
The first stanza begins by explaining the purpose of the urn. The urn is called a “still unravish’d bride of quietness” this beginning phrase holds two meanings. The word “still” can have meaning with regards to either time or motion. Also, the reference to the urn as a “foster child of silence and slow time” similarly shows that the urn is not affected
It is as if the urn has been turned to reveal another scene in stanza four. A procession being lead by a priest and a sacrificial heifer is depicted. Then, a small village is imaged, empty of all its people, because they all followed this procession. The poet also imagines that the town will forever be desolate and empty there will not even be anyone to tell why it is empty. This stanza seems to convey emotions of both pain and joy. The joy and beauty of the procession and the sacrifice contrasted by the lasting desolation of the imagined town being forever empty.
The meaning of the final two lines have been the subject of much disagreement between critics. The meaning of the philosophical statement “Beauty is truth, truth beauty” has a much to do with the meaning of the poem but the actual decision that is reached by the poet is difficult to discern. Is the poet rejecting the urn as being beautiful because it does not truthfully represent the real world or does the poet recognize the urn as because it is the “truth”, the goal that the real world must reach in order to become beautiful?
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