Ode on a Grecian Urn is a poem by John Keats, first published in January 1820. It is thought not to be based on any specific Greek vase. The poem captures aspects of Keats's idea of "Negative Capability"; we do not know who the figures are on the urn, what they are doing and where they are going. The uncertainty, doubt, and mystery continues: readers are divided whether the poem advocates the beauty and truth of the urn, or if in reality Keats believes that anything of any real worth is, paradoxically, to be found in the transient world. The ode deals with the complexity of art's relationship with real life.

The poem begins:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,

and ends with the famous lines:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty, - that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

Due to uncertainty over where the punctuation is placed, it is impossible to know whether the last lines are spoken by the urn, or representative of the poet's view. Also, it may be that only "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" is spoken, and the rest is the poet's comment. This has led to significant critical division over the meaning of the famous Ode.

The concept of beauty and truth being equivalent is found in the philosophy of Friedrich Schiller that beauty is when the subject's true inner nature (its "truth") is truly expressed.

One of the English language's more famous poems, Ode on a Grecian Urn has frequently been the subject of parody. Desmond Skirrow 'summarized' it thus:

"Gods chase/Round vase./What say?/What play?/Don't know./Nice, though."

Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" is often read as an amusing but vacuous lyric until it is read side by side with Keats's "Ode."

External links

• Full text of poem

British poems | Poetry of John Keats | 1820 works