Lessons from a Grecian Urn

Returning to Timelessness

“Poetry… should strike the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost a remembrance.”

— John Keats

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is one of the most celebrated and well-known poems of the English language, and rightly so. However, it is arguably also one of the least understood—and rarely well-performed.

Unfortunately, the advent of twentieth century Modernism cast a cloud of obscurity over many works in the classical tradition. The classical—or timeless—tradition is typified by Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” the works of the ancient Greeks like Plato, Homer, Aeschylus, Sophocles, Seneca and Virgil; and the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Schiller, Shelley, Poe et al. Of course, we also have the countless Eastern masters, a timeless world all of its own (and also well-worth exploring).

Chinese Classical Poetry: Selections from the Shijing (Book of Songs)

In the twentieth century, many of the most compelling aspects and classic works like Keats’ “Ode on a Grecian Urn” were treated in a manner which Keats—and those he most identified with as a ma…