FREE ESSAY ON ODE ON A GRECIAN URN-JOHN KEATS

ODE ON A GRECIAN URN-JOHN KEATS

Ode on a Grecian Urn-John Keats
The second stanza in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" begins with the statement, "Heard
melodies are sweet, but those unheard/Are sweeter." Keats views art as something that is
eternal and lets you experience what's happening in the painting. While he cannot
actually hear the music of the young man's pipes, he can just imagine how sweet the
melody would sound. If one was to hear music played, it would only please him for the
duration of the song, but in looking at a painting of a youth playing pipes one can take
pleasure in it every time he looks at the painting. Of course, in Keats' time there were
no CDs or cassettes.
In the same stanza, Keats speaks of the young man's lover. He tells the youth that
although he is so close to his lover but cannot kiss her, he shouldn't be upset because
they will always love each other and they will never grow old and ugly. Keats treats
these painted characters as real people, as if they were living in their own little world
confined to the edges of the urn. He percieves art as something that is better than real
life.
Keats goes on to discuss some trees whose branches, he remarks, can never be bare. They
will always exist in Spring - always green. Keats enjoys the fact that nature remains the
same, and in this particular painting, in its most beautiful state - Spring. The two
lovers will always be in love and will always have passionate symptoms including fever,
heavy breathing, and dry mouth. He gives very real, very human qualities to these two
painted beings.
Then in stanza four, Keats describes a religious sacrifice of a cow. But he goes on to
contemplate where all of these religious people came from. "What little town by river or
sea shore,.../...Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?/ And, little town, thy streets
for evermore/ Will silent be; and not a soul to tell/Why thou art desolate, can e'er
return. He goes far beyond the reaches of the actual painting, and wonders about how the
now empty village will forever remain silent and desolate.
Keats ends the poem by telling the painting that it will live on to serve as a friend to
other generations when his generation is long gone and dead. 
By using his imagination in interpreting this painting, Keats shows us what he thinks
about art. A work of art can mean different things to people, but it remains for many
generations to take from it what they will.