artistic illustration of a Grecian urn set against a backdrop of hills and columns

Ode on a Grecian Urn

by John Keats

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Student Question

Does the final stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" contain any Romantic concepts?

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The final stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" reflects Romantic concepts such as a focus on the common man, imagination, and emotion. It portrays rustic figures, evokes imagination through the eternal nature of the urn's imagery, and elicits emotional responses. The poet's emotional comfort in the urn's enduring presence and the assertion that "beauty is truth, truth beauty" highlight the Romantic preference for emotion over reason.

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Romanticism, a literary movement spanning the years 1785 - 1830, emphasized the following: awe of nature, individualism, interest in the common man, imagination, and emotion. The final stanza of John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" portrays Romantic thought by incorporating the last three of these five.

The first lines of the stanza speak of the "marble men and maidens" that decorate the urn, and the fifth line of the stanza exclaims, "Cold Pastoral!" The figures on the urn for the most part are common people, those rustic men and women that would be celebrated in a "pastoral" poem, that is, one that focuses on a rural countryside.

The entire poem, but certainly this stanza, emphasizes the imagination. Seeing the figures and scenes depicted on the urn can "tease us out of thought as doth eternity." That is, it captures our imagination to an extent that we can never exhaust all the thoughts it inspires. At the end of the stanza, the poet imagines the urn speaking to the observer, and he imagines future ages past this one when the urn will continue to speak to people. 

The exclamations in the stanza convey emotion: "Oh Attic shape! Fair attitude!" and "Cold Pastoral!" The urn has provoked an emotional response in the poet. The poet takes emotional comfort from the fact that the urn will live on, even as people age and generations pass on to "other woe." The last two lines of the poem are an emotional, rather than rational, statement. To say that "beauty is truth, truth beauty" is all one knows or needs to know is another way of saying that reason is not necessary--as long as one is convinced emotionally of the relationship between truth and beauty. 

By emphasizing the common man, imagination, and emotion, the final stanza of "Ode on a Grecian Urn" reflects tenets of Romanticism.

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