by Sarah Huth

Created on: July 11, 2008

John Keats (1795-1821) is known for his almost tragic descriptions of beauty and love; he was the epitome of what many of us think of when we hear the world "poet" today. His own feelings for the infamous Fanny Brawne, the young girl who lived next door to him, have become know across the world due to the publication of the painfully beautiful, sometimes obsessive letters that he wrote to her. It seemed that a shadow loomed over this doomed little dreamer, however, and he died of tuberculosis at the age of thirty-six, cutting his contact with Fanny short; it was the same disease that had taken both his mother and siblings in previous years. Keats' legacy lives on though, in the immortal words that he wrote while he was alive; he has been referenced in everything from songs by The Smiths to the teen book series "Gossip Girl". Along with his letters to Fanny, Keats is known greatly for his odes. An ode is a form of poetry or verse that is based around something specific and is often very lyrical. In "Ode to a Grecian Urn", Keats chooses to celebrate the beauty of a piece of pottery he's been viewing. He is captivated by this ancient form of art, which does something that life itself cannot; it preserves images of youth and beauty forever. To someone who essentially knew that he was going to die young (Keats began showing signs of tuberculosis in 1818, the ode was written in 1819), it is clear as to why this idea would be appealing. I can almost imagine Keats standing in a museum, staring at this urn, and painfully wishing that he too could hold its secrets of eternal beauty.

As Keats begins describing the urn in the first stanza, it is clear how much he both admires and envies this piece of art. He states, "Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness, thou foster-child of silence and slow time. Sylvan historian, who canst thou express, a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme." By calling it an "unravished bride", he is calling it pure, unmarked, or clean. It is still beautiful and untouched, despite its age. He also refers to it as "the foster-child of silence and slow time", which basically means that it is in the care of time, or that time has favored it and allowed it to be well-preserved. He says that it is a "Sylvan historian", and that it can "express a flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme". This essentially means that the urn has perfectly preserved scenes from the past through the images along its sides, allowing us to look back in time. By showing

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