Ode on a Grecian Urn
John Keats
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?
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!
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.
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.
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."
"Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written by the influential English poet John Keats in 1819. It is a complex, mysterious poem with a disarmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. These scenes fascinate, mystify, and excite the speaker in equal measure—they seem to have captured life in its fullness, yet are frozen in time. The speaker's response shifts through different moods, and ultimately the urn provokes questions more than it provides answers. The poem's ending has been and remains the subject of varied interpretation. The urn seems to tell the speaker—and, in turn, the reader—that truth and beauty are one and the same. Keats wrote this poem in a great burst of creativity that also produced his other famous odes (e.g. "Ode to a Nightingale"). Though this poem was not well-received in Keats' day, it has gone on to become one of the most celebrated in the English language.
Summary
The speaker directly addresses the urn, deeming it a pure partner of quietness itself as well as the adopted child of silence and vast lengths of time. The urn is a historian of rural scenes, which it depicts better than does the poetry of the speaker's era (or perhaps language more generally). The speaker wonders what stories are being told by the images on the urn; whether the figures it depicts are human beings or gods, and which part of Greece they are in. The speaker wonders about the specific identity of the male characters and the reluctant-looking women. Do the scenes show a chase and an attempt to escape? Noting the musical instruments on the urn, the speaker questions if the scenes on display represent some kind of delirious revelry.
The speaker praises music, but claims that music that cannot be heard (like that on the urn) is even better. As such, the speaker implores the urn's pipes to keep playing—not for sensory reward, but in tribute to silence. The speaker focuses a young piper sitting under some trees; just as the piper can never stop playing his song—as he is frozen on the urn—so too the trees will never shed their leaves. The speaker then focuses on a scene that depicts two young lovers. Though they are nearly kissing, their lips can never meet. The speaker tells them not to be upset, however: though the kiss will never happen, the man and woman will always love one another (or the man will always love the woman), and the woman will always be beautiful.
The speaker now addresses the images of trees on the urn, calling their boughs happy because they will never lose their leaves, and they will never have to say goodbye to spring. The speaker then returns to the piper, whom they perceive as happy and untiring—the piper will play new music for the rest of time. This fills the speaker with thoughts of happiness and love. The figures on the urn will always have happiness to look forward to, always be out of breath from the chase, and always be young. All the passions of the living human world are far removed from the figures on the urn—and these passions cause heartache, lovesick fevers, and thirst.
The speaker turns their attention to another scene on the urn, which appears to depict a ceremonial progression. They notice the figure of a shadowy priest leading a cow, which is mooing towards the sky and is dressed with ceremonial silks and flowers. This image causes the speaker to wonder where those in the procession have come from—which town by the river, coast, or mountain has fallen quiet because they have left on this religiously significant morning? The speaker directly addresses this unknown town, acknowledging that its streets are frozen forever in silence. There is no one left who can explain why the town is empty.
The speaker takes a more zoomed-out look at the urn, noting its shape and apparent attitude. They recap the urn's population of pictorial men and women and its depictions of nature. To the speaker, the urn seems to offer a temporary respite from thought, in the same way that eternity does. But this respite seems inhuman or false, leading the speaker to call the urn cold. Inspired by this sentiment, the speaker notes that, when everyone in their generation has died, the urn will still be around. It will become an object of contemplation for people with different problems than the speaker's generation. To them, the urn will say that beauty and truth are one and the same; this fact is all that it is possible to know, and all that anybody actually needs to know.
Themes
Mortality
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is a complex meditation on mortality. Death preoccupies the speaker, who responds by seeming to both celebrate and dread the fleeting nature of life. The scenes on the urn depict a Classical world that has long since passed—and yet, in being fixed on the urn itself, these scenes also evoke a sense of immortality. The urn is therefore a contradiction—its scenes speak of vibrant humanity and, because they are frozen in time, seem to represent a kind of eternal life. At the same time, everything and everyone in the urn’s world is no more. Sensing this contradiction, the poem can be read as a process of response, in which the speaker tries to make sense of mortality—both that of others and their own—without ever coming to a comfortable resolution.
Importantly, one of the main purposes served by an urn was to hold the ashes of the dead. Though it can’t be said definitively that this is the sort of urn Keats had in mind when writing this poem, he would no doubt have been aware of this as a possible interpretation. The urn is the sole object of contemplation in the poem, and accordingly death—and the fleeting nature of human life—is present from the beginning.
The speaker projects their anxiously shifting thoughts about mortality onto the urn, which seems to stand for both life and death at the same time. At points in the poem, the pictures on the urn seem to come alive for the speaker. Stanzas 2 and 3 are full of praise for the scenes at hand, in which the urn’s figures appear blissful and carefree. Lovers at play, pipe-playing musicians, and bountiful nature all create a “happy, happy” feeling in the speaker. Here, then, the speaker celebrates life, and the scenes frozen on the urn represent a kind of victory of life over death. Indeed, the speaker praises the lovers on the urn as “For ever panting, and for ever young,” and notes that the tree beneath which they sit will never “be bare.”
But the pictures on the urn are ultimately just that—pictures. All the lives depicted by the urn—and the maker of the urn itself—are long gone. They only seem alive because they are rendered so well, performing actions that speak of vitality and humanity yet are not themselves full of life. What’s more, though the maiden depicted “cannot fade,” neither can her lover have “thy bliss”—that is, he can never kiss her in his frozen state. This complicates anxiety about the inevitable march of time, given that to stop time essentially stops not just death, but life as well. Mortality is thus presented not simply as an end to but also a distinct part of life.
This realization dawns on the speaker through the course of the poem. Arguably, this is marked when the speaker introduces their own mortality in line 8 of stanza 3: “All breathing human passion far above.” This moment brings to mind the speaker’s own breath settling on the object of contemplation. To breathe is to be alive—and to be reminded, in this case, of inevitable death.
From this point onwards, the poem becomes less celebratory and more anxious. The busy scenes on the urn seem to speak of an emptiness intimately linked to mortality. In stanza 4, for example, the speaker is vexed by the fact that the people depicted on the urn can never return to their “desolate” hometown.
By the poem’s close, the urn becomes “cold” to the speaker—that is, its inanimate quality offers no lasting comfort to the speaker’s contemplation of mortality. Ultimately, the speaker turns this realization on their own generation, which will be laid to “waste” by “old age.” The speaker, then, grapples with the question of mortality throughout the poem. At first, the beauty of the urn seems to bring its characters back to life, as the stillness of the images makes their lives immortal. Eventually, though, reality sets in, and the urn makes mortality all the more present and undeniable.
Art, Beauty, and Truth
“Ode on a Grecian Urn” examines the close relationship between art, beauty, and truth. For the speaker, it is through beauty that humankind comes closest to truth—and through art that human beings can attain this beauty (though it remains a bittersweet achievement). At its heart, the poem admits the mystery of existence—but argues that good art offers humankind an essential, if temporary, way of representing and sensing this mystery.
The poem’s famous ending is vital to understanding the speaker’s position on art, beauty, and truth, and contextualizes the lines that have come before. The speaker’s concluding sentiment—"Beauty is truth, truth beauty”—demonstrates that, in the context of this poem, beauty and truth are one and the same. Art’s role is to create this beauty and truth, but the speaker doesn’t present beauty and truth as clearly definable aspects of human existence. The speaker feels this connection intuitively—and the one-way conversation with the urn, and what it represents, is an attempt to make sense of these intuitions.
The speaker does, however, foreground the aesthetics of the urn throughout the poem, and matches the seductive beauty of the object with a sensuous and delicately crafted linguistic beauty of its own. Though the poem cannot—and doesn’t try to—pin down the precise relationship between art, beauty, and truth, its language works hard to be beautiful and to demonstrate that beauty is something valuable and essential to humankind. As one example of this above, the way the gentle /f/ sound in “soft pipes” seems to make the /p/ sound of “pipes” itself become quieter. Just as the maker of the urn tried to give an authentic and beautiful account of the world in which it was made, the poem tries to bring “truth” and “beauty” to its rendering of the urn.
The poem, then, offers no easy answer to the question of the relationship between art, beauty, and truth. But it does argue unequivocally that these three are co-dependent, essential to one another. Furthermore, it may be that the strength of this relationship is partly dependent on its mystery. Perhaps “All ye need to know,” then, suggests people need to be comfortable in not knowing too. The last lines, taken out of context, might suggest that this is a poem in praise of beauty. Yet the speaker’s position is ultimately much more nuanced. The inanimateness of the urn’s scenes becomes representative of humankind’s desire to represent itself and its world.
Whether or not people can achieve lasting beauty through art, the speaker feels deeply the importance of trying. With the urn’s scenes frozen in time, the melodies of the pipes cannot be heard, the trees cannot shed their leaves, and the people walking can never arrive at their ceremony. In short, everything is paused in eternity. This means that the beautiful sound of the pipes is, in fact, a kind of silence. The scenes thus become not just pictures of human life, but also abstract representations of beauty—they are pure beauty, untainted by having to actually exist or eventually die. If beauty is something to be aspired to, as the last lines seem to suggest, then the beauty of the urn is more absolute because it represents the idea of beauty itself—not just an attempt to make it. The poem, then, takes on a complex philosophical quality, considering beauty both as something that has to be aspired to by humans and as an abstract concept that perhaps ultimately lies out of human reach.
History and the Imagination
In “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the speaker makes a powerful effort to bring history to life. The poem functions as a kind of conversation, between an early 19th century speaker on the one hand and Ancient Greece on the other. Of course, this conversation can only really happen in one direction—it is up to the speaker to imagine the lives and stories that, though once real, now only exist in the urn’s pictures. Overall, the poem argues that imagination is key to understanding and sympathizing with what has come before—but that this effort can never give a full picture of the richness and detail of worlds that are long gone.
Part of the speaker’s fascination with the urn is that it is a genuine historical object that was created around the time of historical moment that it depicts. The craftsmanship of the urn, combined with sheer luck, has allowed a small part of the history that it embodies to survive for millennia. The speaker foregrounds the importance of objects in relation to history by calling the urn a “Sylvan [rural] historian,” instantly drawing a link between the speaker’s own historical moment and the urn’s and noting that the urn has survived as a “foster-child of silence and slow time.” The speaker thus emphasizes both the immense length of time in which the urn has existed but also its “silent,” inanimate quality. That is, without an effort of the imagination on the part of the viewer, the urn itself says nothing about history. The poem thus partly becomes a real-time example of this effort to actively engage with the past.
Eventually, the speaker finds the urn to be “cold”; it cannot satisfy the speaker’s desire to bring the ancient world back to life. That, of course, doesn’t mean the effort is wasted. Just as the urn itself could never give a full account of the world at the time it was made, neither could the speaker truly hope to get a full sense of history through the urn.
Nevertheless, a feel for the world of Ancient Greece—however in complete—has been achieved. The imaginative work of the speaker brings the imagination of the reader to life, and an atmosphere of a particular point in history is therefore brought to life too. The cow being led to the sacrifice, for example, seems to both ground the action of the urn in Ancient Greece and bring it momentarily to life—the speaker imagines the cow lowing towards the sky, a detail that seems specifically aimed at making the scenario more vibrant and present for the reader.
The poem acknowledges that no generation can ever have a full account of the world as it was before. Objects and imagination, though, help to tell history’s stories. And just as the urn allowed the speaker to explore this subject within the form of the poem, the poem itself becomes an object that allows its readers to explore both the historical atmosphere of the urn and get a sense for the 19th century moment in which the poem was written; the Romantic poets had a deep interest in the Classical world, and this ode shows a speaker trying to make sense of the relationship between those two distinct historical moments.
No object—whether an urn or a written account—can ever bring a historical moment into the present to be experienced in full detail. But objects together with the imagination do help to bring stories of the past to life, and it is in these stories that one generation relates to those that came before. The urn’s world as described in the poem is full of human activity that felt familiar in the 19th century and still feels familiar now; history and the imagination therefore help humankind to relate to its past, and see what one moment has in common with the next.
그리스 자기(瓷器)에 부치는 노래
그대 아직 강탈당하지 않은 침묵의 색시여
그대 고요와 더딘 시간 속에 양육된 아이,
숲 속의 역사가,
환상의 이야기들을 우리들의 시보다
더욱 감미롭게 표현할 수 있는 자,
무슨 전설이,
잎으로 술 장식되어 그대 형상을 이루고 있는 신들을 인간들을
혹은 둘 다 따라다니고 있는가?
템페 계곡이나 아케이디어 골짜기에서,
무슨 신들이며 무슨 인간들인가?
싫어하는 몸짓을 하는 저 여인들은 누구란 말인가?
무슨 광란의 추적이며,
탈출을 위한 그 무슨 필사의 몸부림인가?
피리들과 손북들은 또 어떠하고,
이 무슨 광란의 환희인가?
들리는 선율은 감미롭다.
하지만 저들의 들을 수 없는 선율은 더욱 감미롭다.
그러므로 피리들이여, 고요 속에서 계속 연주하라.
더욱 감미로운 노래를, 감각적인 귀가 아닌 마음의 귀에,
음색이 없는 영혼의 소곡들을 불어달라.
나무 아래에 있는 아름다운 젊은이여,
그대는 그대의 노래를 결코 떠날 수 없으리라.
또한 저 나무들도 발가벗은 모습을 결코 내보이지 않으리라.
용감한 애인이여,
그대는 절대로, 절대로, 사랑의 키스를 성취하지 못하리.
그녀의 입술에 거의 접근했건만...
하지만 슬퍼하지 마라.
그녀는 결코 사라지지 않으리,
비록 그대가 열락을 맛보지 못했지만,
그대는 그녀를 영원히 사랑할 수 있으리,
그녀는 영원히 아름다우리!
아, 행복한 행복한 가지들이여!
너희들은 잎을 지게 할 수도 없고, 봄에 작별을 고할 수도 없으리;
그리고, 영원히 새로운 노래를, 영원히 피리를 연주하는
너 지칠 줄 모르는 행복한 연주자여,
더욱 행복한 사랑! 더욱 행복하고 행복한 사랑이여!
영원히 따뜻하고 언제나 즐길 수 있으리,
영원히 헐떡이고 영원히 젊은;
슬픔에 찬 가슴, 싫증 난 가슴,
불타는 이마, 바싹 마른 혀를 남기는
모든 숨 쉬는 인간의 정열을 초월한 사랑이여!
그대 아직 강탈당하지 않은 침묵의 색시여,
그대 고요와 더딘 시간 속에 양육된 아이,
숲 속의 역사가,
환상의 이야기들을 우리들의 시보다
더욱 감미롭게 표현할 수 있는 자,
무슨 전설이,
잎으로 술 장식되어 그대 형상을 이루고 있는 신들을 인간들을
혹은 둘 다 따라다니고 있는가?
템페 계곡이나 아케이디어 골짜기에서,
무슨 신들이며 무슨 인간들인가?
싫어하는 몸짓을 하는 저 여인들은 누구란 말인가?
무슨 광란의 추적이며,
탈출을 위한 그 무슨 필사의 몸부림인가?
피리들과 손북들은 또 어떠하고,
이 무슨 광란의 환희인가?
들리는 선율은 감미롭다.
하지만 저들의 들을 수 없는 선율은 더욱 감미롭다.
그러므로 피리들이여, 고요 속에서 계속 연주하라.
더욱 감미로운 노래를, 감각적인 귀가 아닌 마음의 귀에,
음색이 없는 영혼의 소곡들을 불어달라.
나무 아래에 있는 아름다운 젊은이여,
그대는 그대의 노래를 결코 떠날 수 없으리라.
또한 저 나무들도 발가벗은 모습을 결코 내보이지 않으리라.
용감한 애인이여,
그대는 절대로, 절대로 사랑의 키스를 성취하지 못하리.
그녀의 입술에 거의 접근했건만...
하지만 슬퍼하지 마라.
그녀는 결코 사라지지 않으리,
비록 그대가 열락을 맛보지 못했지만,
그대는 그녀를 영원히 사랑할 수 있으리,
그녀는 영원히 아름다우리!
아, 행복한 행복한 가지들이여!
너희들은 잎을 지게 할 수도 없고, 봄에 작별을 고할 수도 없으리;
그리고, 영원히 새로운 노래를, 영원히 피리를 연주하는
너 지칠 줄 모르는 행복한 연주자여,
더욱 행복한 사랑! 더욱 행복하고 행복한 사랑이여!
영원히 따뜻하고 언제나 즐길 수 있으리,
영원히 헐떡이고 영원히 젊은;
슬픔에 찬 가슴, 싫증 난 가슴,
불타는 이마, 바싹 마른 혀를 남기는
모든 숨 쉬는 인간의 정열을 초월한 사랑이여!
제사를 지내는 곳으로 오고 있는 이들은 누구란 말인가?
오 신비로운 사제여,
그대는 하늘을 보고 애처롭게 우는,
명주 같은 옆구리가 온통 꽃다발로 치장된
저 송아지를
그 어떤 푸른 제단으로 데리고 가는가?
강가 혹은 바닷가의 작은 마을이
혹은 산 위에 지어진 평화로운 성채가
이 경건한 아침, 어떻게 텅 비게 되었는가?
그리고 작은 마을이여, 네 거리는 영원히 조용하리라;
그리고 네가 왜 텅 비게 되었는지
말하러 돌아 올 사람은 한 사람도 없으리라.
오 아티카의 형체여!
대리석 남자와 처녀로, 숲의 나뭇가지와 밟힌 잡초로
온갖 수 놓아진 아름다운 자태여;
그대 침묵의 형상이여,
너는 영원(永遠)이 그러 하듯이:
끊임없이 자극하며 우리의 생각을 끌어내는구나.
차가운 목가(牧歌)여!
늙음이 이 세대를 황폐케 할 때,
그대는 우리의 고뇌와는 다른 고뇌의 한 복판에서,
인간에게 친구로 남으리, 그리고 말하리,
“미는 진리요, 진리는 미”라고 ----이것이
너희들이 이 세상에서 아는 전부이고, 알 필요가 있는 전부니라.
그리스 항아리에 대한 송시 ( Ode on a Grecian Urn )는 낭만주의 시인인 존 키츠가 1819년에 쓴 시로 처음엔 무명으로 출판되었다. 이 시는 "1819년의 위대한 송시" 중 하나에 포함되었다. 이 시는 당대의 비평가에게는 잘 받아들여지지 않았고 19세기 중반에 들어서야 인정받았으며 최근에는 영어로 된 가장 위대한 송시 중 하나로 평가받고 있다.
존 키츠는 그리스 항아리를 보면서 예술이 가지고 있는 무한한 삶을 그렸고, 불멸성을 가진 존재에게 이 시를 바쳤다. 이것은 시대를 넘어서는 초월적 존재에게 바치는 노래이다. 비록 육체는 소멸하지만 그의 시는 계속 남아 있을 것이라는 점을 소망하며 이 시를 적었다.
- 로마에 있는 비석에는 " 이 곳에 물로 이름이 쓰여진 자가 잠들다. (Here lies One whose Name was writ in Water.)"라고 쓰여있다고 한다. 그 스스로도 자신의 이름이 이렇게 후대에 남을 줄 전혀 몰랐다고.
- "키츠를 지구에 보낸 이유는 다른 모든 작가들의 기분을 상하게 하기 위해서다.(Keats was put here on earth to make every other writer feel bad.)"라는 농담이 있다고 한다. 그는 25세에 요절했지만, 천재적인 업적을 이루었고, 그 나이대에 그런 업적을 이룬 다른 예술가는 아무도 없다고 한다.
- 그의 병이 심해졌을 때 (사망 몇달 전), 기후가 조금 더 따뜻한 로마로 옮겨 로마에서 사망했는데, 그는 로마에서의 생활을 "사후세계"라고 불렀다고 한다. 너무 고통스러워 빨리 죽기를 바랬다고. 이미 죽음을 예감하고, 모든 생활기반과 연인이 있었던 영국을 떠나왔기 때문에, 로마에서는 극심한 고통에 시달리며 마지막을 맞이한 것으로 추측된다.