"A thing of beauty is a joy forever; its loveliness increases; it will never pass into nothingness. This famous quote from Keats' "Endymion"" perfectly describes what he loved to pen: works on beauty, and beauty is one of the main themes in his work "Ode on a Grecian Urn". "Throughout this work, Keats intended to use the immortality of his poem to teach and admonish future generations. He accomplishes this through the personification of the urn, the stories upon the urn, and the understanding of truth and beauty.
Keats first personifies the urn to make the reader regard it as more than an object and thus more relatible. The speaker speaks directly to the urn as if he could hold a conversation with it. He first personifies the urn by referring to it as the "unravish'd bride of quietness " (1). This line suggests that the urn and it's stories remain unravished--or uncorrupted and are a model of timelessness within time. By addressing the urn the speaker suggests "its changeless ungenerative descent through the ages.but it remains itself and transmits itself and its meaning directly. " Additionally, Keat's use of the word "bride " is a perfect illustration of "the inviolate, undisturbed sanctity " of the "urn-bride" (Patterson 210). The first line is strongly supported by the second personification, "thou foster-child of Silence and slow Time (2). The urn is a "foster child" of silence and time thus not produced by them but "adopted and nurtured " by them (Patterson 210). .
Jacob Wigod explains that "the observer is aware that at this point in time it (the urn) exists for him but that it has existed for countless generations before him (Wigod 113). In this light, the speaker sees the urn as a "historian that can tell "flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme " (3-4). The urn "speaks to him (the speaker) silently out of the past" and in return, the speaker believes that the urn can speak more truth than his own poetry can.
