Ode to a Grecian Urn Keats
John Keats' poem "Ode to a Grecian Urn," contains many messages about life, love, and history. Within its stanzas there are countless allusions to the fact that art, once recorded becomes and ideal of beauty, shattered only by the loss of such art but never degraded by time, memory or corporeal reality. The three themes that repeat throughout the work are those of love, silence, and beauty
The work written in celebration of Greek art is not known to be attributed to any particular piece of art, but is instead associated with Keats' memory of the Greek art he had seen in his lifetime. (RPO john Keats "Ode to a Grecian Urn" (http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1129.html) It seems that through the reflection of this form of Greek art, often depicting the youthful ideal in very athletic stances, there is a symbol of representation of perfection, etched forever in the silent clay.
In the mentions of love throughout the work are sentiments of the ideal of courtly love,...
"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 though love, and she be fair!" (Keats lns 17-20) In this passage Keats demonstrates an ideal of love, one that is admired from afar and therefore never soiled by the focus of closeness or challenged by deceit.
Keats begins the Ode with the concept of the sweetest music being silence. The figures of youth and beauty cannot tell their story, so the viewer can conjecture, making the game even greater for the viewer. "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, / the foster child of silence and slow time." (lns 1-2) And later in the work also, "Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; / Not to the sensual ear, but more endear'd, / Fair youth beneath the trees, thou canst not leave / Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;"…
