Which British poet wrote 'Ode on a Grecian Urn'?

Which British poet wrote “Ode on a Grecian Urn”? The answer is John Keats.

Keats wrote the poem in May 1819, during one of the most productive periods of his short career. It is one of his celebrated Great Odes of 1819, alongside “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on Melancholy,” “Ode to Psyche,” “Ode on Indolence,” and “To Autumn.” The poem addresses an imagined ancient Greek urn and reflects on the relationship between art, beauty, time, and human experience.

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” contains five stanzas of ten lines each. Its scenes include lovers who can never quite embrace, musicians whose songs never end, and villagers preparing for a sacrifice. Because the figures are frozen in art, their beauty and activity appear eternal, even though real human life is temporary.

The poem was first published anonymously in January 1820 in Annals of the Fine Arts and later appeared in Keats’s 1820 collection Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St Agnes, and Other Poems. A common mix-up is attributing it to Percy Bysshe Shelley, another major English Romantic poet.