The speaker is contemplating the picture on a Grecian urn that shows young people leaving a city for a spring religious festival. They are forever young, forever happy, forever about to fall in love, forever enjoying life on a beautiful day. As the speaker thinks about these unchanging figures, he emphasizes their immortality to draw a contrast between it and human mortality.

The speaker identifies with the scene on the urn to the point of envy, wishing that like art, life could freeze in time at a high point of youth and happiness. That way, nobody would have to suffer, age, or die. Art seems superior to human life to the speaker precisely because it is not time bound but instead captures beautiful moments forever.

In the third stanza, the exact center of the poem, the speaker hits a high point of ecstasy as he contemplates the urn's immortality, repeating the word happy over and over. He begins the stanza by writing,