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Overview
Along with his five other famous odes, Keats composed “Ode on a Grecian Urn” in 1819, at the peak of his poetic ability
. The poem centers on an ancient Greek urn covered in idyllic pastoral images of pipers, processions, and panting young lovers. The speaker feels drawn in by these images, which fascinate and confound them in equal measure. Just as the speaker spends five stanzas pondering the urn’s enigmatic meaning, critics have spilled a great deal of ink arguing about what the poem is really about. In particular, the striking ambiguity of the final verses has made the poem one of the most hotly disputed works in the English language.Read a summary & analysis, an analysis of the speaker, and explanations of important quotes from “Ode on a Grecian Urn.”
