John Keats’ mythical poem, “Ode on a Grecian Urn”, explains the consequences of

eternity by contrasting both beautiful and dark sides of the never-changing story that urn
displays.

The author expresses how eternity could both be beautiful and depressing at the same
time by showing the bitter-sweet love of the young couples. In the second and the third stanza,
the author focuses on the couple that are sitting under a tree. In the positive interpretation,
readers would translate the message that with never progressing time, the lovers will always be
together, the young woman would stay beautiful, the young man would be piping a fresh new
song forever, resulting in a happiest life. But on the other hand, the couples would never be able
to kiss or interact any further and they would even feel eternal pain like being in hell, described
in the last line of the third stanza as “A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.” as a
reference to the bible’s description about hell.

The author also conveys how eternity could both give hope and take it back right away
by the story of the quiet town in the fourth stanza. The stanza is about every town people
participating a sacrifice on an Altar, leaving no one at the town. This could be interpreted as
town people sacrificing a cow for their agricultural growth, since the author describes the town
as a small one locating beside a river, or a seashore. The message of this stanza is that, even
though the sacrifice will bring the people hope of bringing good fortunes, they won’t be able to
finish the ritual and never coming back to the town, indicated by “Why thou art desolate, can
e’er return.”

Lastly, the author uses the concept of eternity applied on the urn itself to show how
absence of time could benefit art and people. In the first and last stanza, the author covers the
description of the and also the lore behind the urn. The author explains the whole lore under this
poem: the time is frozen and the story on the urn stays unchanged. A part of the first stanza
describes the urn as “Sylvan Historian” that could tell story better than the author’s poem (“our
rhyme”), indicating that story could be told even the time on the urn is null. The message is
furthermore enhanced by the quote at the end of the poem, telling the readers that art, while
unchangeable, it is better because the message and the story are preserved and it could tell
stories better than anything