Instant Access To 100,000+ Essays!

John Keats, a poet who attained extraordinary achievement for his short lifetime, was born the son of a London stableman. He grew up in relative poverty compared to many of the other poets of this time. Keats lived to be only 24 years old and his writing career lasted only five years. One of his most read ode’s, is “Ode on a Grecian Urn”. Keats does three things in this ode to attempt to convey his thoughts: he uses a series of paradoxes in the poem to contrast the differences between the mortal life portrayed in the art on the urn and the frozen permanence of the urn itself, he makes use of a narrator who speaks to the urn and asks questions of both the urn and of the reader to show the mystery of the urn’s art, and he also makes use positive and negative wording of the language in this poem to show his underlying feelings on the subject of the poem. The first stanza begins by explaining the purpose of the urn. The urn is called a “still unravish’d bride of quietness” this beginning phrase holds two meanings. The word “still” can have meaning with regards to either time or motion. Also, the reference to the urn as a “foster child of silence and slow time” similarly shows that the urn is not affected