is marveling at the pictures on the urn and asking questions as to the nature of the urn, the keeper of the secrets of the characters on its sides--who are they?  What chase is going on? What music is playing? What love ecstasy is displayed? In the next few lines, the speaker talks of the music the piper is playing--because it is imagined, the music is sweeter than any we can actually hear since we each imagine music that we would like to listen to; the speaker also views the lovers who will always be young, always be excited with one another since they are always just on the verge of a kiss.  The trees never lose their leaves, the musician will never tire of playing, the lovers will always be enticed with one another, and the speaker realizes that these characters exist as ideas and "above" the world of experience in which he lives which is less than perfect--"burning, parched". In the next few lines, the speaker notices other characters--the priest leading the cow to sacrifice, the quiet town, etc.  The ending addresses the urn as "ColdPastoral" who remains the same while we all grow old and die. The truth of the "ideal" life is beauty. 

In this poem, the speaker is making observations about eternal beauty vs real life and aging. He is addressing the urn directly when he says "thou."

While observing a beautiful Grecian urn, the speaker can see images of young lovers about to embrace, a musician ready to play music, sylvan images that are lush and green, among other images frozen in time. The speaker realizes the setbacks of being alive with the prospect of passing time. Exemplified in the lines:

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard / are sweeter

the speaker observes that while life as time passes, or the melody we hear, is beautiful, the prospect of beauty and melodies yet to come brings a promise of hope that within the urn will never fade. While the young lover on the urn is near his beloved, he cannot quite touch, kiss, and embrace her. However, the speaker points out that the young man should not grieve, because his beloved's youth and beauty will never fade, and that perfect moment of being in love and about to embrace is eternal for him. Likewise, the rest of the poem tells that while the people on the urn cannot live life and enjoy the beauty, their life will remain frozen and within that beauty forever. The passing of time will never affect the people frozen on the urn.

On the other hand, the speaker observes that real life continues outside the urn:

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours...

When the speaker, and everyone else alive's, time comes to age and die, the urn will remain with its beauty long after. The people pictured on the urn will stay young, beautiful, and forever in the same moment. However, the speaker does add that while we, in real life, will age and die, the urn will also remain in its own woe. The urns beauty will never die, but those people will never experience the joy real life can bring. The young lover will never embrace his beloved, the musician's sweet melody will never be heard, and those people frozen in time will miss out on the joy of life.

The speaker brings to mind the argument of whether it is better to have eternal youth and beauty, but miss out on the joys of life, or to have life, love, and joy, but know that sooner or later you will age, grow weaker, and eventually die.

Keats uses the ancient tradition of an ode, or ballad, as his poetic device. An ode is not unlike lyrics, as the words are meant to be put to music. In older times, odes had a very rigid pattern, but by Keats' day, it was the feeling rather than adherence to method that was important. It is that feeling in a familiar form that the poet uses to communicate.

While Keats was not as strict as the ancients, he did utilize form; the poem is not free verse. Each stanza consist of five sets of ten line stanzas; each stanza has its own rhyme scheme:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens
loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?

Additionally, each stanza presents a problem in the first four lines (the quatrain). The last six lines, or sestet, gives an answer.

The style section of eNotes explains the first stanza this way: While the quatrain tells us that the poet cannot adequately express the "flowery tale" depicted on the urn, the sestet reveals why. The urn's pictures raise a string of questions that language alone cannot answer.

hmmm...that's an interesting quesiton because there are many different interpertations of this poem.
The main thing that captures the speakers interest in the urn, is the idea of time and art and beauty. The lovers on the urn are frozen in time, for all eternity. Although the "bold lover" will never catch the girl, the girl will never age. The urn is beautiful to the speaker because of the fact that it will never change for all eternity. The beauty also comes from a safe place. One way of looking at the "truth and beauty" statement is to consider that the scene on the urn is true and beautiful because it is self-contained: it has no need for answers, and so it will always have found its truth, unlike real life, where new details always rise up and make truth and beauty elusive. The common factor to both truth and beauty in this poem is that they both occur when you know all that you need to know, regardless of what is happening around you.

Keats neatly sandwiches his stanzas between the first and last lines which both address the urn:  Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,  and  O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede...         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought As doth eternity

The first stanza is an introduction, addressing the urn itself.  Who are these people and what are they doing on your sides? What can it mean for those of us just now laying eyes upong you?

The second stanza introduces the theme of imagination.  The music we can all hear may not be liked by everyone, but the music we imagine will please us all simply because we imagine that which we like.  This stanza is all about things on the brink of happening, yet never will.  Anticipation of the thing is wonderful!

The third stanza addresses the lover, the musician, the trees which will forever remain in love, young, playing without tiring, and full of green leaves for eternity.  There is nothing to worry about here in this stanza...no sunburn, parched tongue, or broken hearts.

The fourth stanza questions the priest leading the cow to sacrifice and the absent townspeople about where they are going and what they will do, which all leads to the question: What is the truth about all of this?  We can see and appreciate the beauty, as will many to come.  "Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,"—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

You can divide the poem into sections by the visual elements the poet is describing.  You can tell that the poet is explaining what he sees on this ancient piece of art by his question and answer technique and by his use of apostrophe to address is, as if it would answer his questions itself.

Each stanza describes a scene such as the "leaf fringed' border and the gods and maidens frolicing in a "mad pursuit" of one another in the first stanza.

In the second stanza, a lover playing a pipe is described as he wanes for his true love.  In the third the speaker describes a religious ceremony with a priest and a "green altar".

Several other images present themselves to the viewer, and they all culminate in the final message:

"Beauty is truth, truth beauty," - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."

Here the poet is commenting upon the ultimate concept of beauty and how it can accurately reflect all humanity from all times.

Some of this information and a copy of the txt can be fourd at the link referenced below.

To understand the metaphor one must find the tension in John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn." This tension is between the aesthetic ideal and reality.  The images on the urn, that of maidens and fair youths, will forever be beautiful and "For ever wilt thou love," but, as in reality, they will never have the physical pleasure of the culmination of their love.

Also on the urn is the depiction of "pipes and timbrels" that play in "wild ecstasy," but the viewer can never experience the sound of their music.  

Thus the art is "desolate," for it "can ne'er return" to life.  "Beauty may be truth," but it is truth in its ideal, not its reality.  The urn can teach its viewer of truth, but only the person can experience real truth and actual beauty.  Only in reality can one learn of passion, only in reality can one enjoy the sensual sounds of the piper.

See the question/response listed below which gives further explanations on this ode.

For Keats, the Grecian urn symbolizes a paradox: it depicts so much of what makes life worth living—music, love, youth, beauty—but in representing these things as static and unchanging, it seems to represent death as well; even the very shape of the vessel, which is an urn, is often synonymous with death.

For example, the bold lover's beloved described in the second stanza "cannot fade" and will "be fair" forever, while he will love her forever. Likewise, the season of spring will never pass, and the boughs, so full of flowers, "cannot shed" their leaves and petals. The "happy melodist" will be forever "piping songs" and will never tire of playing and singing. There will always be "more happy, happy love" to be enjoyed by these who will never grow old. In this way, then, they seem to achieve immortality.

However, it is a "Cold Pastoral" too. The musician and the lovers "canst not leave," and the lover can never actually kiss his beloved. He will never have his "bliss," because he can only ever be just about to kiss her. They will seem to love forever, but there is also something of an emptiness conveyed by the fact that this love will be forever "warm and still to be enjoy'd"—it is not "breathing human passion." Somewhere, there is a "little town" that is emptied of its people, and it will be desolate forever. This is death.

Thus, for Keats, the painting on the urn seems to immortalize something beautiful about life and, in immortalizing it, actually kills it, suggesting that what makes life—and youth, beauty, love, and so on—so beautiful is its changeability, its dynamism, the fact that it does not last forever.

Keats uses the poetic device of apostrophe in this poem. Apostrophe occurs when an inanimate object is addressed as if it is alive. Keats addresses the urn in the first stanza, calling it:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,

Thou foster-child of silence and slow time

Keats also carefully structures the poem to reflect his rising emotion as he contemplates the urn and becomes more and more identified with it. The rise in emotion crescendos in the middle of the poem, in stanza three, as the speaker repeats the word "happy" over and over again, emphasizing his joy with the repeated use of exclamation points. After this high point, the speaker gradually comes down from his sense of euphoria.

Antithesis is another poetic device as the unchanging, eternal quality of the urn is continually contrasted to the fast changes of the natural world. One example is the speaker's delight that it will be forever spring on the urn:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

Your leaves

There are numerous poetic techniques employed in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by the Romanticist poet John Keats. Among these are elements of the sonnet form and rhyme, imagery, symbolism, alliteration, and personification.

Within the theme of how Art has the power to convey the truth of human experience, Keats uses several poetic devices:

• Personification

Addressing the urn as "bride of quietness" and "Sylvan historian," Keats gives human traits to the Grecian urn as he acknowledges that it contains a "flowery tale" that is sweeter than the poet's rhyme. Further, he comments, "Ah, happy, happy boughs!" 

• Imagery

In stanza I the poet describes the painting on the urn with its deities and mortals, maidens, and men. There is a "leaf-fringed legend," "pipes and timbrels." The urn depicts religious celebration and sexual play among other aspects of life. However, these images are frozen in time and the lovers will never kiss as they are arrested in their movements because they are painted on the urn.

In stanzas IV and V there is visual imagery with such descriptions as the "green altar," the heifer's "silken flanks with garlands," "river or seashore," the "red-breast," "a garden croft" and "gathering swallows."

• Alliteration

There is the repetition of the /th/ in line 18: "She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss."

In another example, the /s/ is repeated in this line: "Will silent be; and not a soul to tell." And the /h/ is repeated throughout this line: "More happy love! more happy, happy love!"

• Symbolism

Employing the symbols of "trees" for Nature, "song" for Art, and "Bold Lover" for procreation, Keats explains the tension between what is on the urn and what is real. For the urn, "truth is beauty, beauty truth" (a literary device called chiasmus). This beauty lasts because it is frozen in time. However, for the poet who knows that beauty does not last, the truth is not restricted to the images on the urn. He realizes that the lovers will never consummate their love but will remain only in their moment.  

• "Sonnet" form

Keats uses iambic pentameter, and his poem resembles a sonnet as it is laid out on the page; however, there are only ten lines in each stanza. Still, the stanzas have a pattern to them as the rhyme scheme is nearly consistent throughout: The first four lines are ABAB, and the next six are CDE and then some variation of CDE (CED).

One poetic technique that is used in this poem from the outset is metaphor. The speaker compares the urn he is talking about to a series of different images that each point towards the centrality and importance of the urn as a symbol of eternal beauty. Note the comparisons that are established in the first couple of lines:

Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
     Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express...

The urn is compared to a "still unravish'd bride of quietness," a "foster-child of silence and slow time" and a "Sylvian historian." These metaphors are very important in the way that they establish the sense of how this urn represents a transcendent beauty for Keats. For him, the urn is "unravish'd" in the sense that it stands for how true beauty and art does not diminish or fade over the years. True beauty dwells in a realm of "silence and slow time" that allows Keats to develop the contrast between the urn and the frail humans who are left to contemplate such beauty in their brief mortal spans. Therefore metaphor is one poetic technique that Keats uses with great effect in this poem.

Some poetic techniques used in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" include the following.

Apostrophe: Apostrophe in poetry is the address of someone who is not present or of a personified object. In this poem, the speaker addresses the urn—the personified object—they are looking at, calling it "thou" or you, and directly speaking to a figure on the urn, calling it "bold lover" and giving it advice. This technique underscores the speaker's sense of identification with the urn: he treats it and the scene he sees on it as if they are alive and can be interacted with.

Imagery: Imagery is description using any of the five senses of sight, sound, touch, taste, or smell. The poem abounds in imagery as the speaker describes the scene of the urn. For example, we can see and hear in our imaginations the priest leading the young cow that is decorated with flowers and "lowing" out of town.

Alliteration: Keats employs alliteration in the poem, creating a pleasing sense of rhythm, which can be seen in the following line:

Of marble men and maidens overwrought.

Rhetorical questions: Keats also uses a series of rhetorical questions in the poem, questions that are not meant to be answered but which aid in offering a quick thumbnail description of the urn, such as in "What pipes and timbrels?" These questions also reveal the speaker's curious and wondering state of mind.

Finally, "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a lyrical or emotional poem, and Keats highlights the deep emotions the speaker is feeling through his repetition of words like "happy" and the use of exclamation points.

There are numerous examples of figurative language used in John Keats's "Ode on a Grecian Urn."

First, Keats uses metaphor when he calls the urn an "unravish'd bride of quietness" and a "foster child of silence and slow time." The urn being an urn, it is not literally a virgin bride or a foster child, but Keats is trying to emphasize the purity of the artwork by using such comparisons. The images on the urn will never progress, and the people, animals, and plants rendered will never decay or fade. He also refers to the urn as a "historian," as the images on its sides capture life (or at least an idealized approximation of life) in a time and place long gone by.

Another example of figurative language used in this poem is personification. When looking at an image of a tree, Keats personifies the tree by describing its boughs as "happy":

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu.

The tree's leaves will never fall, since the images on the urn are frozen in time, therefore leaving the tree in a never-ending state of "happiness" and springtime.

Finally, Keats uses oxymoron when he describes the urn's images as "Cold Pastoral." This is because the pastoral as a genre is usually associated with the springtime. Pastorals idealize country life and are often associated with warmth. However, because the images on the urn are static and remote, there is a coldness to them as well. This oxymoron captures the complexity of the juxtaposition: the images are beautiful but without animation or life.

Literary devices cover just about any technique a writer or poet uses to communicate a message to the reader. Before looking at the devices Keats uses, we can start with the message that he is trying to convey and see what devices he uses to reinforce his points. In this poem, Keats hopes to communicate how mesmerized or enchanted he is as he gazes at the picture on a Grecian urn. He wants us to see the picture on the urn just as he does. He also wants us to understand how excited he is at the emotions the picture evokes in him. As he looks at the young people merrily headed to a pagan festival, he thinks, wow, because they are works of art, they will never age! They will never get sick! They will always be as happy as they are at this moment, which is a very happy moment for them. How cool is that? As he thinks about this, he experiences an outburst of joy that he wants us to feel too. He also wants us to think, as he does, about whether it is better to be mortal or to be a work of art, and then to follow his thoughts to their ambiguous conclusion.

To help us see the picture on the urn, Keats uses imagery, such as the "soft pipes" the musicians play and "fair youth, beneath the trees." These are images because we can hear or see them in our imagination. He shows the "bold lover" at the point--forever--of kissing (but not quite kissing) his "fair" beloved. He tells us of the spring leaves forever on the trees. We see the heifer "with garlands drest" and the little town that is empty because everyone has gone out to the country for the festival. 

To help us feel how exciting the idea of never aging or dying is to him, he directly addresses the picture on the urn in ecstatic or passionate language. This form of direct address is called apostrophe. As the poem hits its emotional highpoint, Keats is so absorbed in the urn that he cries out to the branches of the trees, the piping musician, and the lovers, saying:

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! 

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is characterized by a highly lyrical tone with specific stanza forms and rhyme schemes.  There are five ten-line stanzas with a single rhyme scheme that combines the “quatrain of a Shakespearean sonnet with the sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet.” Check the link below for specifics on the rhyme scheme and other literary devices.  With the devices above you should be in great shape.

Oh, this is a tough one, because there are so many used.
Let's start with the basics.
Keats uses personification in the first line.
He uses metaphors throughout.
He uses allusions.
He rhymes.
He uses archaic speech.
He uses consonance.

How's that for a start? ;-)
Greg

Well, a good place to start is looking at the first stanza of this excellent poem and seeing the number of metaphors that are contained even in the first three lines. Let us remember that a metaphor is an example of figurative language that compares one thing with something else without the word "like" or "as." See if you can spot the three metaphors in the first three lines of this excellent poem:

Thou still unravished bride of quietness,

Thou foster child of silence and slow time,

Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme...

The speaker of this poem then begins his Ode by comparing the Grecian urn he is contemplating to an "unravished bride," a "foster child of silence and slow time," and a "Sylvan historian." Note the point of these metaphors: Keats is highlighting how the urn is undamaged by time by comparing it to a virgin bride; he is saying how it has long been protected by comparing it to a "foster child" of time and silence"; and lastly, he shows how it preserves history by calling it a "Sylvan historian." Now, see if you can find any other examples of literary devices in this poem. Good luck!

This question has been answered previously.

http://www.enotes.com/ode-grecian-urn/q-and-a/what-literary-devices-poem-ode-grecian-urn-261584

The speaker in the poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is fascinated and teased by the figures on the urn. All the figures are frozen in time and therefore they exist in an eternal state. But, in being frozen, the figures are cold and lifeless. The depictions on the urn represent a paradox: they are eternal and their moods and emotions are frozen forever, but they are lifeless at least in the sense of existing in time and involving the five senses. 

The speaker is obsessed with the figures on the urn and the paradox that they symbolize for him. Consider the second stanza. Melodies you can hear with the ear are sweet but the unheard melodies on the urn are sweeter because they are eternal and not subject to error in real existence. Likewise, the trees will never lose their leaves. And while the lover will never be able to kiss his beloved, she will always be near him and always be beautiful. This is important, concerning beauty, because the notions of time, beauty, and truth conclude the poem: 

Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal--yet, do not grieve;

She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss,

For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! 

In the last stanza, the speaker remarks that he is teased by these eternal, frozen images of life. But then he also claims "Cold Pastoral!" This hints at the possibility that the speaker realizes that these images of life frozen eternally in perfection, actually only represent temporal fragments, not eternal forms. In the last lines, the speaker considers what the personified urn might say: 

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. 

The speaker says to the urn that in future generations the urn will say "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." In the next lines, it is unclear who "ye" is, but one logical interpretation is that the speaker is talking to the urn, so the urn is "ye." What this means is that for the (personified) urn, beauty and truth are simple; beauty and truth are based on aesthetics and symbols, two-dimensional pictures which may or may not represent truth and beauty. That is the assessment of truth and beauty in the world of the urn, so that is all the urn ("ye") needs to know. For the speaker, and all humans living in the real, linear world, truth and beauty are more difficult to describe and experience.

In reality, that "bold lover" has to chase his beloved. There is a journey toward truth and beauty. From this interpretation, the conclusion is that, in real life (unlike the "world" of the urn and its figures), beauty and truth are not interchangeable and they do not come easily. Thus, we must pursue these virtues "in midst of other woe." 

One major theme of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is that a beautiful work of art brings comfort and joy to the viewer. In this poem, the narrator gazes at the picture on an ancient Greek urn. It shows a pagan springtime festival, with musicians and young lovers ready to kiss. As the narrator contemplates this scene, he becomes more and more ecstatic. How "happy" the scene is and always will be! It will always be springtime, the leaves will always be on the trees, the lovers will always be young and in love, the musicians will be always playing their tunes. The narrator, as his enthusiasm rises to a crescendo in the third stanza, repeats the word happy six times:

Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed

         Your leaves ...

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 ...

This is a very interesting question, because, as with some great poems, it is very difficult to highlight one particular theme with any great authority. In this ode, the speaker addresses an antique Greek vase on which two painted scenes appear. In the first scene, gods or men pursue maidens in a forest setting while musicians play. In the second scene, a crowd of people and a priest lead a young cow toward an altar for a ritual sacrifice. The mood here is solemn and mournful in contrast with the feverish excitement of the first scene. In the final stanza, the speaker's aim is ambiguous: He may be celebrating the urn as a symbol of eternal art and idealised beauty, but he may be commenting on the limitations of art and the need to find fulfillment in living life.

In this poem, bit by bit, a miniature world of human passions comes alive, only to remind us that it is as dead as the clay on which it is represented. Keats has shown us that in the midst of change, art seems to provide the only truth. Yet this is a truth that depends not on sensory experience, but on the human imagination:

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shall 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.

Thus this Ode acts as a pageant of Art and its truth-giving properties against the death and destruction that destroys all other forms of "Truth" in our society.

In a way, it's hard to be clear about the theme of "Ode to a Grecian Urn" because two of the key lines are still debated. The debate is about the meaning of:

'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'--that is all
    Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

The debate also encompasses a question about to whom the final lines of the ode are addressed. Some opinions are that they address the urn, the reader, or the figures on the urn. An ode is a lyric poem in high diction written to a person or thing, usually absent. This is a five stanza ode that does not adhere to a strict three stanza strophe, antistrophe, epode form. It has a unique rhyme scheme that varies per stanza. For example, using different rhyming words, stanza one has this rhyme scheme ababcdedce, while the second stanza has this one ababcdeced.
A defensible analysis is that, while the final lines of stanza four address the "little town" pictured on the urn, the fifth stanza addresses the Grecian urn just as the first does. The fifth stanza starts with the apostrophe "O Attic shape! Fair attitude!" "Attic" mean of Grecian origin. "Fair attitude" is a metonymy based on the urn's graceful form. If this is taken to be correct, then the debated lines about 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty' can be analyzed as the main theme of the ode.

In the fourth stanza Keats asks a good many questions, e.g., "Who are these coming to the sacrifice?". The ending lines on beauty answer these questions saying that the urn represents beauty and that is all the viewer needs to know about the urn. In other words, the urn should be enjoyed and valued for the beauty it offers whether the story behind it can ever be sorted out or not. Thus the main theme would be that beauty is all the truth that need be known about art and that the truth about the importance of art is that it gives beauty.

One of the main themes is time.  Time has been frozen in the scenes on the urn; however, the narrator ponders how the lovers will never actually kiss, for example, so they won't ever be able to realize thier love, etc.  Another main theme is one of truth and beauty, but not in tne normal sense.  The narrator seems to imply that:

..."truth is beauty, beauty truth" only applies in the place where all activity is stuck in one moment. We can certainly see the beauty: the lovers are in love, the music of the pipe is sweet, the trees are always full, and the people attending the sacrifice have the joy of anticipation. But where is the truth in all of this? It is a limited truth. (Enotes)

Throughout "Ode on a Grecian Urn," the speaker describes the images with which the eponymous urn is decorated. In pondering these images the speaker also reflects upon the nature and purpose of art.

In the final lines of the poem, the speaker indicates that the images on the urn seem to communicate one idea, namely that "beauty is truth, truth beauty." In other words, the speaker reflects that beauty and truth are one and the same thing. Perhaps we might take this to mean that wherever and whenever one finds beauty, one will also find truth in that beauty. For example, the beauty of a person might point to the pleasing truth of that person's character. Likewise the beauty of the natural world might point to what many Romantics like Keats considered a truth—that God manifests himself through nature.

We might also say that there is a truth in the beauty of art, such as the images with which the urn is decorated. The beauty of art perhaps points to the truth that human beings are inherently creative, imaginative beings.

We could also postulate that wherever there is truth, there is also, necessarily, beauty. There is often a simplicity to truth that appears beautiful, especially when there is, surrounding that truth, so much that is untrue, disingenuous, and deceptive. There is also a beauty in the truth, or realization, that humans are creative beings capable of producing timeless, beautiful works of art, such as the eponymous urn.

Stanza 1, the speaker is addressing the urn itself.  He mentions it is timeless and has lasted for a long time and asks questions of the message on its side--who are these lovers? These gods? The story behind the chase and the piper? Stanza 2, he says he can imagine the tune the piper plays and it is sweeter than one actually heard simply because everyone who imagines the tune will imagine one that would sound sweet to him...therefore the imagined tune is sweeter to everyone.  He also mentions the trees whose leaves will never fall and the lover always on the verge of that first kiss. The girl will always be lovely, it will always be Spring. How wonderful to be stuck in that position. Stanza 3, he continues with the idea of being stuck in the good part of love and weather.  The lovers will never experience vengence or hurt, and the spring weather wil always be balmy, not hot and parching. Stanza 4, he speaks of the cow decorated with flowers being led by a priest to the sacrifice.  The town is deserted and no one will ever know why since it's not on the urn...the water is ever present and the streets are forever silent.  The people can never return home since they were not painted onto the urn's story. Stanza 5, he mentions the shape of the urn and the stories etched there forever.  He bemoans that after we are dead the urn will still exist.  Cold, hard beauty and truth remains. It is all we need to know.

Keats was inspired to write this poem after seeing the scenes painted on an ancient Greek urn. The eNotes introduction points out that the speaker "attempts to identify with the characters because to him they represent the timeless perfection only art can capture."

There is not enough room here to give you the meaning of every line in the poem. If you could point out a few lines that are difficult for you, that would be more doable.

Take a look at the eNotes summary and discusion of themes in the poem; I've pasted links to them below. I've also given you a link to an article on how to explicate, or analyze, poetry. You should find a lot of useful informaton there.

Good luck!

One of the themes you might like to consider in respect to the poem is the autonomy of art. Even though the Grecian urn—and the poem it inspired—is, like all forms of art, a product of the time and place in which it was created, it also has the remarkable capacity to transcend the conditions of its production. Only in this way is it able to speak to us many years after it was created.

The Grecian urn is thousands of years old, and yet it still manages to say something to Keats. If it lacked autonomy, if it couldn't stand apart from the society in which it was created, it wouldn't be able to do that.

In evaluating a work of art, be it a Grecian urn or the collected works of John Keats, we can draw on a number of different factors: historical (when it was created); biographical (who created it); and social (what was society like at the time the work of art in question was created?)

Yet ultimately, what matters more than anything else about a work of art is its ability to communicate to us. This is done primarily through beauty. This point is amply illustrated by the last two lines of "Ode on a Grecian Urn," which have generated a considerable amount of scholarly debate down the centuries:

Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.

"Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a type of lyric poem, meant to express emotion. Keats, in this poem, conveys the joy art offers, transporting us to a different realm where beauty does not age or die, and joy never fades.

Keats's speaker shows the power of being able to imaginatively engage with and merge mentally with a piece of art. The speaker is so taken with the scene that he sees on a Grecian urn that he eventually breaks out in repeated exclamations of the word "happy" in stanza 3. This word communicates the speaker's feelings about the state of mind of the figures on the urn, his conviction that the ancient Greek festival was a joyful event, and his emotion of joy at the thought of never having to suffer, grow old, and die.

The speaker contrasts the ageless quality of art, in which the figures on the urn will remain forever young and forever experiencing the joy of a spring festival day, with human beings, who experience unhappiness, pain, and death. Wouldn't it be better, the speaker asks, to be frozen at one particularly blissful moment of youth?

By taking a long moment to focus on the value of art and beauty, Keats encourages us to enter into and value art's timeless, alternative world.

In the first stanza, the speaker directly addresses an ancient Grecian urn, remarking upon its age and the pastoral image it depicts. Lovely young men and women, immortals perhaps, are lounging and frolicking, and their antics tell a story.

In the second stanza, the speaker says that the melody played by the person piping on the urn is lovelier than any that could be heard because it can last forever; likewise, the trees will never lose their leaves, and though the lover will never get his kiss, the beauty of his love will never fade. In a sense, then, they will never die, but they will also never live.

In the third stanza, the speaker describes the branches that will never be leafless and the season of spring that will last forever. Similarly, the love depicted will always be warm and full, never becoming — like real human passion — too much or painful or uncomfortable. Real love can feel like an illness, but the love depicted on the urn never will. This makes it pretty but untrue.

In the fourth stanza, the speaker asks about those people who approach, leading a cow decorated with flower garlands. He wonders about the little town, now emptied because all its people are walking through the countryside on their way to some mysterious religious service. It will be desolate forever.

In the fifth and final stanza, the speaker remarks on the urn's Athenian appearance, its artistry, continuing to address it directly (this technique is called apostrophe). He says that its silence makes him stop and think, and he calls it "cold." The scene may be lovely but it is not truly alive, and so it will live on even after the poet and his generation have died. The urn will continue to exist, to show people that "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty.'" In other words, then, the scene is gorgeous, but it is not truly beautiful because it is not truly alive. Real passion, for example, can go wrong, can fade, can die, but that is what makes it so beautiful while it lasts; the passion depicted on the urn is lovely, but it isn't truthful. Therefore, what is really beautiful in life is truthful, and what is truthful will also be beautiful.

There are five stanzas in Keat's poem:

Stanza 1:  The speaker is looking at an old Grecian urn thinking that the urn is able to better tell a story than a poem is.  The speaker questions what the tale might be about in the string of rhetorical questions.

Stanza 2:  The speaker sees a song being played and a pair of young lovers beneath a tree who are about to kiss.  The speaker comments on the everlasting nature of beauty and youth frozen in the image.

Stanza 3:  The speaker comments on the lovers' happiness and passion that revolves around the tree.

Stanza 4:  A heifer is being lead to a sacrifice and a quiet town is set near the shore.

Stanza 5:  The speaker comments on the everlasting nature of time and beauty frozen on the urn that is wasted in actual life.

The "story" in "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is pretty basic as it hardly exists at all as the "characters" are pictures on an ancient Greek vase. So, really, if there is any story it is about the poet looking at the urn, thinking about it and the ideas it inspires and then writing these down. Of course, the picture represents a story. That story seems to contain two sweethearts. The male character appears to be interested in the female character and is trying to woo her. There are trees around with branches that are in leaf. There is a musician playing the pipes with songs that will be for ever new.This is because they are a snapshot in time and nothing in the picture story will ever age or become ugly. There seems to be a procession, as if it's some sort of celebration or ritual. All the characters are stuck in a time warp and Keats is playing with the idea of Time/Space/Motion/Gravity. He invents imagined places for the characters, but really, even if time never moved on for them, it does for everybody else including us.

In this poem, the narrator has found an old urn (like a vase) that was made long ago by some Greek person.  The urn is decorated with two scenes -- one of lovers listening to musicians under some trees and one of a priest leading a heifer to be sacrificed on an altar.

So the narrator is looking at this urn and contemplating what it means.

First he thinks it would be great to be the lovers or the musicians because they never die.  Their love and their music live forever.

But then he starts to think about how the lovers will never actually touch and make love, the musicians will never be heard by actual ears. And the town where the people are coming from to the sacrifice -- it will always be empty and desolate.

So by the end of the poem he's kind of conflicted and he thinks that because we're mortal we have to find something other than beauty to rely on.

In this excellent poem the speaker addresses a Grecian urn which has two different scenes painted on it These scenes cause the speaker to consider and meditate upon the nature of beauty and truth, and the way that this Grecian urn is a symbol of eternal art and beauty. As the poem draws to its conclusion, the speaker contemplates the significance of the urn for us as humans, saying that by meditating upon the urn it "teases us out of thought," thought being that which makes us aware of our own mortality and the cares of the world. However, contemplating the urn only does this briefly, and we are left with an overwhelming sense of the ephemeral nature of man. The Ode ends on a riddle as we are told that "Beauty is Truth, and Truth Beauty." Yet we are left confused if the speaker is actually celebrating the beauty and truth that is in the urn and that it symbolises, or whether the speaker is actually arguing that contemplating the urn should make us more determined to make the most of our brief lives and search for a truth that is beyond the cold remnant of a dead civilisation.

These lines come in the third stanza, which apparently celebrates the eternal nature of the emotions depicted in the scene painted onto the side of the Grecian urn. The urn is, of course, used as a symbol of eternal art, as it has preserved beautiful scenes from Greek history for a very long time. The third stanza talks of the speaker's enthusiasm or excitement at seeing the emotion conveyed in this scene which has remained the same since it was first created. The lines you have identified, however, present a slightly negative picture of the scene:

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloyed,

A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

These lines seem to describe the consequences of excessive passion by talking about passion that is "far above" and the results of indulging in such a passion, which are feeling heart-sick and having a "burning forehead" and a "parching tongue."