John Keats’ classic poem Ode on a Grecian
Urn contains one of the most famous closing lines in the history of poem, in which Keats seems to explain that all anyone ever really needs to know is that
truth and
beauty are one and the same. And yet much critical analysis has boiled down on the meaning of those final lines and whether they actually coincide with Keats’ views expressed in the poem up to that point.
The first and final
stanzas of Ode on a Grecian Urn do not appear to me to express any change in the speaker's
attitude toward the urn, and I think that there is a definite sense of equality of thought regarding the urn on the speaker's behalf. In both the first and last stanzas the urn is represented as being silent. In the opening
Stanza Keats describes the urn as quiet, unravished, bridal while in the final stanza the urn is addressed once again as as a silent, teasing object.
At the same time the urn is being termed quiet and silent, however, it is also being described as an historian, and in the final stanza it appears that the urn even speaks. The urn speaks of truth and, after all, what is a historian but one who retroactively engages in a search for truth? (At least that’s the theory, but as well know, history is written by the victors and victory carries its own ideology.) Perhaps this is what the urn is saying when it says that beauty is truth and truth is beauty. It's difficult to ascertain exactly what that line and the succession of the couplet actually means; indeed it's somewhat of a nebulous and empty statement when examined closely. It's clear, however, that Keats sees the urn as containing some sort of wisdom and this is a view he expresses in both the opening and the closing stanzas. I can detect no change in his attitude toward the urn throughout the poem, and this attitude seems to suggest that the urn—as a work of art—might hold more keys to wisdom than the actual natural events which are depicted on the urn would do.
More summaries about the Ode On a Grecian Urn