Blog 1

Part 1. At first, I found Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to be extremely difficult to read and to understand—then I read Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan” and decided to stick with Keats’s poem. The language and form did not make any sense to me at all. I did not fully understand the poem after multiple readings, and I honestly still don’t completely understand the message. However, what does make sense to me seems to be an ok explanation of the poem.

Part 2. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” by John Keats follows the thought process of the speaker who is observing an urn that has pictures engraved into its surface. The first stanza seems to question the purpose of the urn. The speaker considers the urn a historian or story teller and questions what the stories are behind the engravings the speaker sees. In the next three stanzas, the speaker describes the particular scenes that are engraved on the urn. For each of the scenes, he makes the observation that these scenes are forever frozen in time since they are etchings in the urn. In the last stanza, the speaker celebrates the fact that the urn will always be present throughout time even though the people who see it will not always exist. This further drives the belief that the engravings are frozen in time. It seems unclear if the speaker believes it to be a good thing or not that the scenes are stuck in time. Nothing will end in the scenes, which includes the song the piper is playing, the love the youth are feeling, and the empty city that is left behind for the sacrifice. On the other hand, the true beauty of the scenes can be appreciated forever.

The speaker’s message—which can perhaps be the message of the urn itself—describes the issue of being frozen in time. It is found in the last two lines: "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." The urn teaches this lesson by showing the beauty of the scenes and the paradox of the scenes being stuck in time. According to the urn, there is the need to know only that “beauty is truth, truth beauty.” Therefore, through the engravings, the urn is showing the beauty that it believes to be truth, and that in turn, all things true are inherently beautiful including the story it depicts in the scenes.