John Keats · first published 1820
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Meaning, complete text, stanza guide, vocabulary, techniques and an explained quiz.
What the poem means
The speaker studies scenes frozen on an ancient urn, admiring their permanence while discovering that life without change also lacks fulfilment and return.
Music, desire and spring remain forever poised at their height; the sacrifice scene then reveals a permanently emptied town behind the beautiful still image. The famous beauty-and-truth statement belongs to the urn's enigmatic address and concludes the encounter without settling every tension the speaker has raised.
The poem
Spelling and punctuation follow the checked source edition. Stanza links connect the text to the guide and quiz.
Stanza 1. Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, Sylvan historian, who canst thus express A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme: What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape Of deities or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What men or gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Stanza 2. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; 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 thou love, and she be fair!
Stanza 3. Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu; And, happy melodist, unwearied, For ever piping songs for ever new; More happy love! more happy, happy love! For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd, For ever panting, and for ever young; All breathing human passion far above, That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Stanza 4. Who are these coming to the sacrifice? To what green altar, O mysterious priest, Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? What little town by river or sea shore, Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, 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.
Stanza 5. O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede Of marble men and maidens overwrought, With forest branches and the trodden weed; Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! When old age shall this generation waste, Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
Stanza guide
Stanzas 1–5
Each stanza shifts attention across the urn and tests permanence from another angle. “For ever” sounds celebratory in the lover and bough scenes, but the silent town and “Cold Pastoral” expose the loneliness and abstraction contained in changeless art.
Return to stanza 1 ↑Vocabulary
- sylvan
- associated with woods or rural scenery
- timbrels
- tambourines or small hand drums
- brede
- decorative embroidery or woven pattern
Literary techniques
Ekphrasis
a poem addresses and interprets a visual artwork
Description becomes a way to ask what still art can and cannot communicate.
Paradox
unheard melodies are sweeter
The claim gives imagined music a perfection unavailable to actual sound.
Repetition
“for ever” recurs
The phrase shifts from promise to pressure as permanence is reconsidered.
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