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.
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