Grecian Urn Poem by gershon hepner

Thou surely ravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster child of dealers and curators,
If you aren’t ancient, tell us and confess
That you’ve colluded with the phony daters
Who’ve tried to sell you as a Grecian urn
When truly you’re aware that you are just
A forgery which ancient urns would spurn,
Although collectors for your shape might lust.
Your provenance is phony, you’ll agree,
So tell us why you have colluded with
The criminals. Say, have they split their fee,
Or do you do it for the sake of myth?

Old vases may be sweet, but when they’re faked
They’re bitterer to palates than warm beer,
As anyone will say if he has ached,
In love before he learned the urns were queer.
I would prefer that you’d been ravished from
The Greeks and the Italians––I could live
With that, regarding looting with aplomb.
For beauty’s sake I’m ready to forgive
Such crimes, but fear that you were not exhumed,
But by a master forger were created.
If I’m correct, your beauty, Grecian urn, is doomed,
For beauty’s truth, and can’t be duplicated.


Inspired by Keats’s famous poem and the art scandals that have forced the Getty Museum and the Metropolitan Museums to return many precious ancient works of art to Italy and Greece. Interestingly enough the most famous lines of the poem are a quotation from Sir Joshua Reynolds, and without quotation marks are the duplication of truth which this poem mentions in its last two lines. In 1997, Dennis Dean published an article in the Philological Quarterly titled “Some Quotations in Keats's Poetry’. In it, he discussed the problem of the final quotation, linking it with the work of Sir Joshua Reynolds. I think it reasonably settles the 'quotation issue':
In his “Ode on a Grecian Urn” Keats will say exactly the same thing, more elegantly but more cryptically also: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty”-surely the most famous equation in English literature and precisely correct in suggesting the Newtonian origin of the unstated “proof.” Many readers of Annals of the Fine Arts would probably have recognized the source of Keats's equation in the writings of Sir Joshua Reynolds because of their familiarity with Reynolds and because the whole technique of allusion (or even short quotation) was fundamental to the neoclassicism in which both Reynolds and his readers had been educated.
Thou still unravish'd bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thou express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring'd legend haunt about thy shape
Of deities or mortals, or of both,
In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal - yet, do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
Your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
For ever warm and still to be enjoy'd,
For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,
A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.
Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead'st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
Why thou art desolate, can e'er return.
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.


1/31/08