Keats, John - Ode on a Grecian urn (3)

Ode on a grecian urn

It emphasizes:
- the value of the Urn
- the poet's love for the classical period, where examples of perfect beauty were created by unknown artists.
The main character is the urn, which is apparently superior to nature seems it fixes, fleeting moment where harmony is caught, yet in doing so, a failure flows from: the impossibility to give life to the images painted on the Urn, since they remain eternally " frozen" as they are in the marble
1 In the first stanza the poet admits the fact that the images painted on the Urn can convey emotions better than the artist as sight can spring emotion more than words
2 In the 2 stanza the idea of negative capability is emphasizes many times, harmony and happiness are fixed and will never change: the trees will remain green, the young man won’t reach his lover and girl will remain beautiful and unattainable, nature and love are at their climax.

3 In the 3 stanza the poet defines the urn as a perfect manifestation of art, able to capture the fleeting events forever in spite of time’s destructive strength. Frequent repetition of time adverbs signal this fear for the transience of life, the real cause of our ruin
4 In the fourth stanza the poet describes the pastoral landscape painted on the urn that evokes a classical Greek environment and the pagan's sacrifices.
5 In the 5 stanza the poet stresses on the silence enveloping the urn "cold and pastoral" at the same time, yet able to mitigate people's sorrows and trouble.
The urn leads the poet to meditation and, thanks to its beauty, the poet finds something worthy in our decaying life