He refers to the urn as both a ‘bride’ and as a ‘foster-child’ which supports this note.
He then calls this urn a historian, who can tell stories which are sweeter than poetry, which perplexes Keats (Cole calls this ‘puzzlement’). He inquires as to who the figures are in lines 6 to the end of the stanza. The paradox he gives is saying the figures give a din, yet they are inanimate. He uses personification to deliver the impression he has of this artwork on the Grecian urn.
2
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
3
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
In the second stanza Keats imagines what music is being played in the scene. He prefers to imagine it because music actually heard is never so perfect or ideal. Similarly, in the figure of a youth about to kiss a maiden, the anticipated kiss is better than either the reality or the maiden; as a work of art, the moment cannot grow old or the maid unkissable. Art has the advantage over reality of being perfect and unchangeable. At the same time he shows yet another paradox as he stresses the figure’s limitations caused by their intransigence. “Progress implies change, and the urn is beyond change. Such are the limitations of the ideal world”.
Stanza three is an expression of pure joy on pondering the urn's scenes. The word happy is repeated six times. The crescendo ends when he comes to the realisation that the lovers shown on the urn are in fact “far above…all breathing human passion” which cannot be so satisfying or so lasting, as he invokes love itself. The imagination is grounded by the word “human”, and his link with these figures is severed as he concentrates on the limitations of human love.
4
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
Here the poet describes another scene, as if the urn has been turned to reveal a different surface. Here there is a procession; a priest is leading a cow to some ritual sacrifice. The poet imagines that the little town from whence the people in the procession came is empty because all the folk have joined the procession. Thus, the imagination goes beyond what the work of art represents and sees what it merely suggests, yet Cole believes that Keats goes too far and the imaginative process begins to fail. “The urn, at last seems incapable of answering the questions put to it”. Whereas the urn once was a teller of stories, it is now silent. This represents the town’s isolation, as opposed to the urn’s inanimitity.
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say'st,
"Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
In the final stanza the poet reviews the whole urn and recapitulates his perceptions. Looking at the urn, he has been "teased" out of thought. As when one tries to imagine eternity one gets to a point beyond which the mind seems unable to go. The poet calls the urn a friend, one who brings a message about truth and beauty and their sameness to the many generations since it was created. The urn will continue to bring that message to generations in the future. The truest thing, because it is perfect and unchanging, is a thing of beauty, a work of art like the urn. Truth is what does not decay, nor does it feel despair but only happiness.
The Ode on a Grecian Urn squarely confronts the truth that art is not "natural," like leaves on a tree, but artificial. The sculptor must chisel the stone, a medium external to himself and recalcitrant. In restricting itself to one sense, the Urn resembles Nightingale, but in the Urn the sense is sight, not hearing. The Urn suppresses hearing, as the Ode to a Nightingale had suppressed sight (and as both suppress the "lower senses" of touch and taste). If Nightingale is an experiment in thinking about art in terms of pure, "natural," music prolonged in time, the Urn is an experiment in thinking about art in terms of pure, "artificial," representational visuality.
The poem had begun with a comparison of the urn with rhyme - to the disadvantage of rhyme. The urn's whole and simultaneous visual art, where everything can be present at once, seemed to Keats, fresh from his disillusion with the nightingale, sweeter than a temporarily experienced art like music or poetry.
