Keats' “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: The Use of The World

The final lines of Keats' “Ode on a Grecian Urn” have perplexed critics almost since the poem's first publication in the Annals of the Fine Arts in 1820.1 The problem is that no one can ever be quite sure who says what to whom at the end of the poem since there is no definitive autograph copy, and those which we have differ in the way the final two lines are punctuated. However, it is not the purpose of this paper to enter into that discussion, but to shed some light on the speaker's attitude toward the urn as it is embodied in the poem's final two lines, particularly in the phrase “a friend to man.” What is the nature of the friendship the urn offers to mankind in general and to the speaker in particular at the conclusion of the “Ode”? And by what process is that friendship arrived at? How does the speaker come to view the urn as a friend? This paper will attempt to answer these questions not only in aesthetic but also in psychoanalytic terms.

A reasonable interpretation of the speaker's reconciliation with the urn can, of course, be arrived at by placing the “Ode” within the context of Keats' poetry and letters in general, as embodying what Stuart Sperry has called “a pattern of imaginitive engagement and disengagement” on the