Art is Legacy
The wonderful ancient life could reserve by display on the romantic poems along the history. John Keats describes the vivid visual art of people’s living life in the urn throughout his viewpoint in the poem Ode On a Grecian Urn. He uses colorful imagery, metaphor, and personification in “Ode on a Grecian Urn” to convey the grateful nature art in the urn to the reader that he went through.
John Keats used figurative language to make the urn more reality to the readers. People’s live from the poem conveys a sense of peace, and the poet’s attitude made the readers felt optimistically. There was much different imagery used again and again throughout the poem. For instance, people “play on pipes”(line 12), youth people “beneath the trees”(line 15), or the “heifer lowing at the skies”(line 33). The writer used imagery could draw readers into a sensory experience. At the beginning of the poem, the poet used metaphor to compare the urn as an “unravish’d bride”(line 1) and a “foster-child”(line 2) and a “Sylvan historian”(line3). It was a strategy of personification because the urn could not be a bride or a child or a historian. These figurative strategies could personate the urn. After that, the poet asked some rhetorical question like the people from the picture is “men or gods”(line 8), what is “pursuit” and “escape”(line 9). Throughout the rhetorical question, we can see the poet was desired to know what has been occurred on the urn. However, the artistic conception of the images was changed after the first stanza.
In the next stanza, the poet described the endless living condition from the picture. Everything that described on this stanza seems would stay in urn forever which lead the reader into an eternal atmosphere. For example, the tree would never bare or the lover would never kiss. Although everything was dazed, the poet recommended the reader not to grieve about that fraze. Because the lover and their love on the urn would not fade even though they could not kiss. Those endless situations created a sorrowful feeling, but the poet’s never “fade” attitude make the reader felt harmony. In addition, the third stanza seemed to proceed by the second stanza because everything was still endless in the third stanza like “boughs cannot shed”(line 21) and the love still stayed forever. However, the feeling seemed changed from this stanza like “happy love”(line 25) evolved into “heart high-sorrowful”(line 29) and “panting”. Then in the fourth stanza, the poet described the quiet town by the sea and the “heifer lowing at the skies”(line 33). It was a peace picture at the urn but the words choice emptied and silent created a desolate condition. The poet used the rhetorical question in this stanza because he wondering to know why this desolated condition happened.
Finally, the poet used personification to create a colorful image in the last stanza. He emphasized when the “old age” (line 46) was gone which meant him and those people who live at present would go, but the urn would stay forever. Besides it, the writer wanted to emphasize that human being have the limited lifespan, but those art legacies would be longevity. At the end of the poem, the urn said: “beauty is the truth, truth beauty”(line 49) which used personification again because the urn was not the human being and it would never talk. The personification improved the vivid feeling on the urn. Simultaneously, it was a simile because he compared the beauty as truth. Finally, “ye know on earth, and all the need to know”(line 50)told people to understand this theory and the nature of art. “The excellence of every Art is its intensity, capable of making all disagreeables evaporate, from their being in close relationship with ‘Beauty and Truth’”(Hebron) and those endless and freeze beautiful images from the urn highlighted the theory of the beauty and truth. Overall, those colorful imageries highlighted the poet’s worships and desire for nature art. It was related to human’s reality because art was legacy. While the neoteric is elapsed, those arts would still pass on and heritage to the posterity.
John Keats used those static moments on the urn to show the truth of beauty nature to the reader. From my point of view, those moments on the urn was important for the poem because the poet wants to tell us the lifespan between art and human in order to remind posterity to comprehend the art. In fact, nothing would be freeze at a moment like an urn thus people should know the theory of true beauty and go deeply to understand the meaning of the art.
Works Cited
Keats, John. “Ode on a Grecian Urn by John Keats.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/44477/ode-on-a-grecian-urn.
Hebron, Stephen. “An Introduction to ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’: Time, Mortality and Beauty.” The British Library, The British Library, 28 Mar. 2014 ,www.bl.uk/romantics- and-victorians/articles/an-introduction-to-o de-on-a-grec ian-urn-time-mortality-and-beauty.
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