Ode on a Grecian Urn

John Keats "Ode on a Grecian Urn" demonstrates many of the characteristics of a romantic piece of literature. The form of the poem is an Ode addressed to an inanimate object. In the Romantic period, an element of Romantic poetry was a lack of convention for time and space. Through Keats poetic form, he brings to life scenes painted on a 2000-year-old urn and the spirit of the artist who created it. Anther quality of …

…it carries this message. At the very end, the lines, "'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,'--that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" (V, 49-50) represent Keats actually speaking with the urn. The urn tells him that the ideas of Neoclassicism are wrong and that he must only look to beauty to find what is right. This is the basis for every work of literature created during the Romantic period.