On Ode to a Grecian Urn

1) This poem seems rather odd to me. I took a literal approach to reading the poem and interpreting a meaning and derived it to be about beauty as a theme though history. It seems like he talks a lot about the stuff on the urn throughout the whole piece, describing it in vivid detail and concludes with the urn saying beauty is paramount. All in all I felt that the imagery was wonderful but the ending wasn't as good as the rest of the poem. It left me saying, "Aww, that's it?"

2) In the beginning of the poem, the author introduces the urn with the title and the fact that it is quite old with the statement, “Thou foster-child of silence and slow time”. The author then sets the scene with a “Sylvan historian” posing questions about the art on the urn such as “What men or gods are these?” Next the author starts to describe the different sets of images on the urn, and that it is frozen in this state for all eternity. This idea is expressed in lines like “Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave”, and “And, little town, thy streets for evermore, Will silent be”. The point of this comes to fruition in the last part of the poem. He implies that when our civilization will waste away and a new one will rise, the urn will remain as a testament to the eternity of beauty. This idea is summed up by lines like these: “Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe, Than ours” and the urns decree, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,--that is all, Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”