"Ode on a Gracian Urn" by John Keats

• John Keats - The most sensuous of the English Romantic poets.
• Some of his poems are the best examples of lyrics in English poetry.
• Theme - the tension between the actual and the ideal in all human experience.
• The transience and imperfection of life are contrasted with the ideal beauty.

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• The poet addresses the urn and looks at the various pictures carved on its surface.
• flute players/ youth singing/ lovers about to kiss.
• More real and more enviable than the human life of audible melody and tangible embraces.
• The love depicted in the art is more enjoyable and permanent than human love.
• Picture of a Greek town and the people going out to celebrate a festival.
• The generations of men pass and die, but amid the changes and changes of this mortal life, Beauty and Truth, not two things, but one and the same thing looked from different angles.
• Stands in sharp contrast to the ephemeral nature nature of the actual life of man.

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• Difference between life and art.
• Life, though real, is subject to decay and death.
• Art, though unreal, has permanence of beauty and the power to enrapture us through fanciful experience.
• "Heard melodies are sweet; but those unheard are sweeter"
• In his imagination, the poet sees the carven figures fresh and immortal in their love and music.
• Lover will always be young, ardent and passionate in his love.

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• Human life is imperfect.
• Life in art, has the unique advantage of being fresh and new and young for ever.
• Beauty and Truth, are one and the same thing.

" Beauty is truth, truth beauty - That is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know"