English Literature

Ode on a Grecian Urn Keats’ poetry depicts an enchanted world of beauty. It is a world of melody, imagination, sensuous delight. It also resounds with a note of melancholy and tragic sense of human suffering. He is often classed with Shakespeare and his poems attain the perfection of classic art. It has a felicity of expression, excellence of vision and wealth of imagery, which are purely Keatsian. Unlike Lord Byron or Shelley, he does not have an intellectual attitude towards life. His poems especially odes reveal his unsurpassed artistic power. He transformed his impression of life and nature into poetry or incomparable beauty. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is one of Keats’ supreme poetic achievements. The poem is a reflection on the contrast between permanence of art and transience of life. The poet explores the relation between art and reality. The poet addresses the Grecian Urn as a “Sylvan historian”. It is a sylvan historian because the pictures engraved on its sides tells the story of pastoral or rustic life. The scenes from Greek pastoral life have beautifully depicted on the urn. They create a unique world of song, ecstasy and love. The poet vividly describes the pictures depicted on the urn. First, there are the flute players playing on their pipe. Their song cannot be heard but the poet says that unheard music is sweeter than heard music. The poet here means that what is imagined is sweeter than real. Then there is a fair youth singing beneath the trees. The tree under which he stands will never shed their leaves. Third picture is that of a lover who is about to kiss his sweet heart. Then there is the picture of a priest leading a cow on the Altar for sacrifice attended by a number of people. The figures on the urn stir the poet’s imagination. He finds that they have the permanence and perfection of great art. He attributes the living quality to these engravings and asserts that they have the artistic perfection and their beauty is imperishable as they represent the lasting truth. The central theme of the poem emerges from the contrast. The fair youth in the picture can go on singing forever. The tree under which he stands will remain evergreen. Similarly, the lover in the picture can always feel warm love and maiden will always remain young and fair. However, in real life, love brings sorrow and distress and youth grows old age. Keats’ imaginative and descriptive power are seen at their best. In the ode he has not merely imaginatively recreated the scene pictured on the urn, he also invested them with intense feeling. The landscape, the seashore and the town are the products of the poet’s imagination. In the last stanza of the poem, the poet gives a message. He admires the urn as a work of pure art, which represent a triumph over time. The present generation will pass away; but the urn remain as a friend to man in times to come. It will convey the message “Beauty is truth, and truth is beauty” it means that the world of art and the world of moral truth are really the same. He has found the Grecian urn to be a living embodiment of the principle. Thus, the sensuous Hellenistic poet makes the poem highly impressive with its charming and rhythmic beauty.