Keats: Ode on a Grecian Term Paper

All breathing human passion far above,

That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd, burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

A lines 28-30)

The final lines of the Ode encapsulate the tension and conflict of the poem in a vision of art as the only means of resolving the disparity between the ideal and the real.

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." lines 46-50)

The last two lines of the poem lines are famous in their succinct summation of the entire meaning of the poem. All we know or need to know, they suggest, is the beauty of art. This is the only true reality for the Romantic port and the only way that we have to deal wit the despair and reality of ordinary life.

Bibliography

Bush, Douglas.Keats and His Ideas. The Major English Romantic Poets: A Symposium in Reappraisal. Eds. Thorpe, Clarence D., Carlos Baker, and Bennett Weaver. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1957. 231-245.

Colvin S. John Keats: His Life and Poetry. May 25, 2005. http://englishhistory.net/keats/colvinkeats.html

John Keats. May 23, 2005. http://www.online-literature.com/keats/

John Keats: An Overview. May 24, 2005. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html

Keats, J. Ode on a Grecian Urn. May 23, 2005. http://eir.library.utoronto.ca/rpo/display/poem1129.html

Ridley, M.R. Keats' Craftsmanship: A Study in Poetic Development. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1933......