Stanza 1. The poet addresses the Urn. Looking at the urn the poets imagination conjures up the ancient life and worship suggested by the sculptured images and he speculates on the abstract relation of art and life. These figures are unpolluted by the hand of man and not destroyed by time. Time which destroys everything has preserved it like a foster child. Scenes from rustic life are depicted on the urn. It is also if some historian had recorded ancient Greek life. The engraver has succeeded in giving it permanence. A poet could not do this better. The scene is pictured with an ornamental border of leaves. It tells the tales of gods and men in Tempe or the valleys of Arcadia in Greece. The poet now asks a few questions. We are these men or gods? Who are these women feigning coyness? Why do the men or gods pursue them madly? The poet wonders how they elude their pursuers. Pipes and timbrels are playing and the whole scene is filled with exquisite rapture.
Stanza
2. In the second stanza the poet
emphasizes the permanence of a moment captured by art.
Songs heard in reality are sweet,
but those unheard, those which dwell in the realm of the ideal are sweeter
still. From the real world the poet
takes us through the world of art into the pure realm of imagination. So the pipes he seems on the urn play on not
to the physical ear but to the ears of the soul and we hear the harmonies of
eternity. The poet addresses the
sculptured figure of the young man who cannot stop singing. The trees under which he is standing will be
ever green, Both the youth and the trees have passed into the realm of eternity
through art. The lover is about to kiss
his beloved. The consoles the
lover. His beloved is always young
because as in real life the lover and the girl do not grow old and lose their
beauty.
Stanza
3. On the urn the trees are even
green. They cannot shed their leaves
because it is always spring for them.
The piper standing under the tree will keep on signing fresh songs. The lovers on the urn keep on loving. They are always happy. The fleeting passions of real life do not
affect them. They are never
surfeited. They do not suffer from the
agonies of thwarted love.
Stanza
4. The poets curiosity is aroused
watching the figures coming to the sacrifice.
Who are these men and women? Who
is this mysterious priest who leads the young sacrificial cow to the grassy
alter. The poet hears the pitiful crying
of the cow. Looking beyond what he seems
before this eyes the poet visualizes the empty stress of the little town. All the people have gone to the sacrifice. They will never return and the streets of the
city will ever be silent and desolate.
Stanza
5. The beautiful shape
of the Grecian Urn raises in the mind of the poet the ideal of Beauty which he
equates with Truth. The sculptured
figures of men and women and the pastoral scene raise thoughts which baffle the
poet. They are as mysterious as eternity. When men of this age are crippled by old age
the urn would whisper words of comfort Oman of succeeding
generations. Beauty is truth, truth
beauty. Beauty and truth becomes one and
the same thing.
