Hayley Rathburn’s Blog

To begin my research, I first looked up images of grecian urns. They are depicted as having several different deities all around them, and they are made of marble. So right away I knew that this would be a large part of the poem, this motif of Greece and coldness. Then I thought it would be important to look up that author, John Keats, himself. I found that he suffered from tuberculosis for much of his life and was dying from the illness. Because of this, he decided to embrace life and always live in every moment. He knew he wouldn’t have long. So, the entire poem explores the essence of beauty by addressing various figures and beautiful forms of art portrayed on an urn. It’s as if Keats wrote about how beautiful life is in order to make himself believe that assertion.

Another interesting thing I learned through my research is that in the poem there is a continuous mention of eternity, immortality, or forever. For instance, in the third stanza there is an anaphora of the words “for ever”. It seems that Keats is trying to grasp this immortality through his writing; even though he knew he was dying, his literary works would continue on after him.

One particular thing of interest I found was that the cities of Tempe and Arcady mentioned in the first stanza are picturesque places in Greece. They are known to be favored by Apollo – the God of poetry and music.