By John Keats
Date: 22 August 2000
"Ode on a Grecian Urn"
Excerpt from "Ode on a Grecian Urn"
When old age shall this generation waste
Thou shalt remain in midst of other woe
Then 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."
John Keats - 1795-1821
One of the most gifted and appealing poets of the 19th century
and an influential figure of the romantic movement. The final lines of
Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn" written when he was only 23 years old, find
the highest form of meaning in pure beauty! The urn is unchanged through
the centuries and that moment of eternal beauty, frozen in time, has more
significance for humanity, according to Keats, than the fleeting nature
of individual happiness. The meaning of these two lines has been much
debated and defies a simple reading. Keat's work presented all of
experience as a tangled web of inseperable and irreconcilable opposites.
His letters often reveal him wrestling with the problems of evil and
suffering in the world.
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