There have been many attempts through the years to find actual Greek pottery that includes the scene Keats describes, but most commentators now think it’s imagined.
The poem first appeared in Annals of the Fine Arts 15 (1819). This text is taken from Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820).
Ode on a Grecian Urn |
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| Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness, | ||
| Thou foster-child of silence and slow time, | ||
| Sylvan° historian, who canst thus express | rural | |
| 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?° | [in Greece] | |
| What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?° |
loth = unwilling | |
| What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? | ||
| What pipes and timbrels?° What wild ecstasy? | tambourines | |
| Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard | ||
| Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; | ||
| Not to the sensual° ear, but, more endear’d, | of the senses | |
| Pipe to the spirit ditties° of no tone: | songs | |
| Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave | ||
| Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; | ||
| Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss, | ||
| Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve; | ||
| She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss, | ||
| For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair! | ||
| 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! | ||
| For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d, | ||
| For ever panting, and for ever young; | ||
| All breathing human passion far above, | ||
| That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d, | ||
| A burning forehead, and a parching tongue. | ||
| Who are these coming to the sacrifice? | ||
| To what green altar, O mysterious priest, | ||
| Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies, | ||
| And all her silken flanks with garlands drest? | ||
| What little town by river or sea shore, | ||
| Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel, | ||
| Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn? | ||
| And, little town, thy streets for evermore | ||
| Will silent be; and not a soul to tell | ||
| Why thou art desolate, can e’er return. | ||
| O Attic° shape! Fair attitude! with brede° | Greek — embroidery | |
| Of marble men and maidens overwrought, | ||
| With forest branches and the trodden weed; | ||
| Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought | ||
| As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral! | ||
| When old age shall this generation waste, | ||
| Thou shalt 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.” |