Ode on a Grecian Urn

Ode on a Grecian Urn was written by John Keats in May 1819. It is one of the ‘Great Odes’ of 1819, along with ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Keats was inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English artist and writer Benjamin Haydon. He perceived the idealism and representation of Greek virtues in classical Greek art. The poem was not well received by contemporary critics until the mid-19th century.

About Ode on a Grecian Urn in brief

Ode on a Grecian Urn was written by John Keats in May 1819. It is one of the ‘Great Odes’ of 1819, along with ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ Keats was inspired to write the poem after reading two articles by English artist and writer Benjamin Haydon. He perceived the idealism and representation of Greek virtues in classical Greek art. The poet concludes that the urn will say to future generations of mankind: ‘Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty’ The poem was not well received by contemporary critics until the mid-19th century. Now considered to be one the greatest odes in the English language, it was first published anonymously in Annals of the Fine Arts for 1819 and is still considered one of Keats’s best works. The poem has been described as ‘one of the most beautiful works of poetry ever written’ by critics who have debated whether the final statement adequately describes the poem’s conception of the poem. It was published anonymously by Richard Woodhouse, who also published the two companion odes. The poems were transcribed by Charles Brown, who later provided copies to the publisher Richard Wood house. The exact date of composition is unknown; Keats simply dated the poem as he did its companion ode. The five odes display a unity in stanza forms and themes, but the unity fails to provide clear evidence of the order in which they were composed. In the odes Keats explores his contemplations about relationships between the soul, eternity, nature, and art. Although he was influenced by existing examples of Greek vases, in the original poem he attempted to describe an ideal type of artistic type, rather than a specific type of vase.

Many contemporary sources have recalled his experience with the Elgin Marbles and their influence on his poem. Keats may also have exposed himself to the Townhese, Holland, and Holland House vases in The Anatomy of Melancholy. Many of these works shared his view that Greek art was both idealistic and captured the Greek virtues and captured these works of art in a specific way. Although Keats completed the poems in 1819 he was not able to complete them in time to publish them in 1820, and the poems were not published until 1821 and 1822. The poets were published anonymously, and their exact date is unknown, but they were published in May and June 1819 as they were written at the same time as the other odes of the same year. They were written in five stanzas of ten lines each, describing and discoursing upon the images depicted on an ancient urn, and were written by Keats as he lived with his friend Charles Brown in Southwark, London. In particular he reflects upon two scenes, one in which a lover pursues his beloved, and another where villagers and a priest gather to perform a sacrifice. He may have been inspired by prints of Greek urns at Haydon’s office, and he traced an engraving of the Neo-Attic marble volute krater, signed by Sosibios, in The Louvre, in Henry Moses’s A Collection of Antique Vases.

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