The “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” by John Keats is poem that come from the Romantic Age of poetry. From further research this particular poem is about nature and its beauty. “The whole idea of using a poem to describe another kind of art form (sculpture) is known by a very specific term: ekphrasis”. The main symbol of this poem and its entirety would be the Urn. The urn is described in several different ways for example in lines 1 the urn is “unravish’d bride.”
A big aspect of the whole poem is its title. “Ode on a Grecian Urn” is very important like all titles in interpreting what the poem truly means and w/o it we would be a boat with no sails. In the poem I’ve noticed that Urn is not used once but the title itself. Today we tend to look at Urn and use it as a vase for plants, or a case for our dead family members ashes, etc. However, back then especially the Greeks hence “Grecian” the urns are in different shapes and sizes. Some urns are used for kitchen utility to hold things and other urns would stand alone for art, like in this poem. Ancient Greece was associated with high cultural art and beauty which is described in this poem through the object of the Urn.
A motif that seems to appear in the poem would be “plants and trees” this poem is more pastoral describing nature. For example, the word “Sylvan” comes from the Latin word meaning “forest” (line 3). The urn is described as a “flowery tale…sweetly” (line 4). It continues that the tale is “leaf -fringed” yet again talking about the plants and trees (line 5). In addition, Grecian urns are bordered or “fringed” with leaf like plants decorations. However, at the end it seems that attitudes tone towards the motif of plants and trees is a bit too much and it takes away from its simplicity the urn. For example, the decorations has “forest branches and the trodden weed” now all of a sudden the serine picture of the forest has become a “weed.”


