Classic Greek Elements In John Keats Ode On A Grecian Urn

The contrast between the eternity of art and the terrible destiny of human’s life is not only expressed directly by comparison. Keats was also very known for putting Classic Greek elements in his works. In these three odes we can see numerous examples of that. First of all ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ has the word Grecian in its title, and the whole ode is very influence by the Greek mythology. ‘In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?/What men or gods are these?’ He mentions in the first stanza the cities of Tempe and Arcady, which were known as forms of paradise in classical Greece. He also refers to ‘gods’ (8) in the plural, as in classical Greece where people where polytheists. This starts the contrast since gods, as art, are also immortal. He later mentions an ‘altar’ (32), as in the Alter of the Twelve Gods.
The nightingale’s ode might not

The music, the girl and the urn itself are illustrated as being beautiful, and that beauty will not change, because the art on the urn preserves it, unlike in the real world where people age and die and the music changes. The same beauty is used in ‘Ode to a Nightingale’ where the bird’s song is also represented as being almost intoxicated to the speaker, in the end he does not even know if it was all a dream: ‘Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music:—do I wake or sleep?’ (79-80). The beauty of the nightingale’s sont contrasts with the speaker initial state of mind, when he is not so well, and wants to rejoin the nightingale. Although he is illustrating a not so beautiful state, he managed to do it in a way it contributes to the beauty of the poem, and shows the opposition with the speaker’s condition alluding to the contrast of art’s immortality and human life’s