Drawing and poem on a Grecian urn

John Keats’s drawing of an ancient urn

Image. A detailed drawing of an urn in an ancient Greek style. The drawing is signed By John Keats. The urn is on a small footed pedestal, with an open top. Around the rim at the top are two elaborately carved handles. The body of the urn is decorated with line drawings of idealized figures of men and women in classical dress.

Source: Keats-Shelley House, Rome.

Excerpt from John Keats’s “Ode on a Grecian Urn”

O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede

Of marble men and maidens overwrought,

With forest branches and the trodden weed;

Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought

As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!

When old age shall this generation waste,

Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe

Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,”—that is all

Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.