Stanza One

During this first verse, we see the narrator announcing that he is standing before a very old urn from Greece. The urn becomes the subject of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, so all of the ideas and thoughts are addressed towards it. On the urn, we are told there are images of people who have been frozen in place for all of time, as the “foster-child of silence and slow time.”

The narrator also explains to us that he is discussing the matter in his role as a “historian” and that he’s wondering just what legend or story the figures stuck on the side of the pottery are trying to convey. One such picture, seemingly showing a gang of men as they chase some women, is described as a “mad pursuit” but the narrator wants to know more about the “struggle to escape” or the “wild ecstasy.” The juxtaposition between these two ideas gives an insight into how he is projecting different narratives onto one scene, unsure of which one is true.

Stanza Two

During the second verse, the reader is introduced to another image on the Grecian urn. In this scene, a young man is sat with a lover, seemingly playing a song on a pipe as they are surrounded by trees. Again, the narrator’s interest is piqued, but he decides that the “melodies are sweet, but those unheard / Are sweeter.” Unaffected by growing old or changing fashions, the notes the narrator imagines the man playing offer unlimited potential for beauty. While the figures will never grow old, the music also contains an immortal quality, one much “sweeter” than regular music. The narrator comforts the man, who he acknowledges will never be able to kiss his companion, with the fact that she will never lose her beauty as she is frozen in time.

Stanza Three

The third stanza again focuses on the same two lovers but turns its attention to the rest of the scene. The trees behind the pipe player will never grow old and their leaves will never fall, an idea which pleases the narrator. Just like the leaves, the love shared between the two is equally as immortal and won’t have the chance to grow old and stale. Normal love between humans can languish into a “breathing human passion” and becomes a “burning forehead and a parching tongue,” a problem that the young lovers will not face.

In attempting to identify with the couple and their scene, the narrator reveals that he covets their ability to escape from the temporary nature of life. The piper’s song remains new forever while his lover remains young and beautiful. This love, he believes, is “far above” the standard human bond which can grow tired and weary. The parched tongue he references seems to indicate that he’s worried about the flame of passion diminishing as time passes, something that won’t worry the young couple. On viewing the figures, the narrator is reminded of the inevitability of his own diminishing passions and regrets that he doesn’t have the same chance at immortality as the two figures on the urn.

Stanza Four

The fourth stanza of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ really begins to develop the ideas. Turning to another image on the urn, this time a group of people bringing a cow to be sacrificed, the narrator begins to wonder about the individuals’ lives. We also see the speaker in ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ attempt to think about the people on the urn as though they were functioning in regular time. This means that he imagines them to have had a starting point – the “little town” – and an endpoint – the “green altar.” In turn, he imagines the “little town” they come from, now deserted because its inhabitants are frozen in the image on the side of the urn “for evermore.” This hints at what he sees as the limitations of the static piece of art, in that the viewer can never discern the human motivations of the people, the “real story” that makes them interesting as people.

The narrator’s attempts to engage with the figures on the urn do change. Here, his curiosity from the first stanza evolves into a deeper kind of identification with the young lovers, before thinking of the town and community as a whole in the fourth. Each time, the reach of his empathy expands from one figure to two, and then to a whole town. But once he encounters the idea of an empty town, there’s little else to say. This is the limit of the urn as a piece of art, as it’s not able to provide him with any more information.

Stanza Five

The final stanza is perhaps the most famous piece of poetry Keats ever wrote. This time, he is talking directly to the urn itself, which he believes “doth tease us out of thought.” Even after everyone has died, the urn will remain, still providing hints at humanity but no real answers. This is where we come to the conclusions he draws. There is a sense that the narrator finds the lack of change imposed upon the figures to be overwhelming. The urn teases him with its immortal existence, feeding off the “hungry generations” (a line from ‘Ode to a Nightingale‘) and their intrigue without ever really providing answers. The urn is almost its own little world, living by its own rules. While it might be interesting and intriguing, it will never be mortal. It’s a purely aesthetic piece of art, something the speaker finds to be unsatisfying when compared to the richness of everyday human life.

The last lines in the piece have become incredibly well known. They can be read as an attempt, to sum up, the entire process of ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ in one couplet. ”Beauty is truth, truth beauty” as an idea has proved very difficult to dissect, however, due to its mysteriousness. It’s unclear whether the sentiment is spoken by the narrator, the urn, or by Keats himself, thanks to the enigmatic use of quotation marks. The source of the speech matters. If it’s the narrator, then it could mean that he has become aware of the limitations of such a static piece of artwork. If it’s the urn, then the idea that one piece of art (or self-contained phrase) could encompass humanity in any kind of complete fashion is nonsensical, and the line deliberately plays off this. There’s a futility to trying to sum up the true nature of beauty in just twenty syllables, a fact which might actually be the point of the couplet. Thanks to the dense, complicated nature of the final two lines, the opening remains open to interpretation.