Keats Ode On A Grecian Urn example essay topic

'Always is as scary a word as never. That phrase relates to the theme of Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', which is an exploration of the border between desire and fulfillment in human life. Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' features a narrator musing upon the face of an urn that holds, for him, more life in its earthenware curves than does the curves of the temporal earth. The title itself reflects the reader-response reading of the urn's text: the ode is on (about) the urn, and the ode is also depicted on the urn. ' This paper provides a history and an analysis of Keats's poem, 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'. Examples of Keats's use of metaphor, personification, and imagery are provided, and the qualities that characterize him as a Romantic are discussed.

' Perhaps his most prolific work, Keats' 'Ode on a Grecian Urn' aesthetically articulates the archaic beauty of a simple urn while simultaneously capturing a sense of ideal beauty in the world. While the reader might first be deceived by the simplistic fa? ade of the poem, the work stands as a complex piece succeeding in deriving poetic bliss from that which lacks letters. In true Romantic fashion, Keats culminates with the declaration 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' (line 49) -an ambiguous aphorism that encapsulates the essence of the poem. In the end, Keats' effective use of literary devices and poignant imagery combine to reveal human passion as 'Beauty. ' In 'Ode on a Grecian Urn,' the speaker observes a relic of ancient Greek civilization, an urn painted with two scenes from Greek life.

The first scene depicts musicians and lovers in a setting of rustic beauty. The speaker attempts to identify with the characters because to him they represent the timeless perfection only art can capture Ode on a Grecian Urn Summary In the first stanza, the speaker, standing before an ancient Grecian urn, addresses the urn, preoccupied with its depiction of pictures frozen in time. It is the 'still un ravish'd bride of quietness,' the 'foster-child of silence and slow time. ' He also describes the urn as a 'historian,' which can tell a story. He wonders about the figures on the side of the urn, and asks what legend they depict, and where they are from. 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' melody's 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 w.