Some engraved pictures, as, the musician, a bold lover and the lady love, the mysterious priest, a heifer, some village folks and some pastoral scenery sculptured upon the urn, -evoke the poet’s imagination. All these are the “silent form” of Attic age and they tease us out of thought as our thought of eternity.
The poet in an askance note begins to question what they are and what their reality is. The poet continues to ask –
What men gods are these? What maidens loth? What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape? What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
On the basis of these questions, the poet begins to explain the significance of those things engraved on the urn and gives a sharp contrast between these things and the reality of life. Life is very transient. Here nothing is ever lasting. Here beauty can not keep her lustrous eyes, youth grows pale and dies. Time absorbs everything on life. We grow consumpted and decayed with the Time. The youth, the beauty, the glory, -are all to be decayed.
Once again, in the short span of our life, we have sorrows and leaden-eyed despair. Here men sit and hear each other groan. In the dreary intercourse if daily life man gets nothing but the weariness, the fever and fret. This fever of this world hangs upon the beating of man’s heart.
But the world of art is above this fever and fret of this world. Here beauty is permanence and she always keeps her luster. Everything is fair in the world of art. The fact behind this is that art absorbs Time as if art grows with the time: -
“Thou foster-child of silence and slow-time”.
The bold lover would always remain young and the lady-love would ever be charming and fair. Because they have not consumpted love. The fulfillment of love is sign of decay. So, the poet says:-
“She can not fade, though than thou hast not thy bliss
For ever wilt thou love, she be fair. ”
Again, the happy melodist would ever remain unwearied. And the mysterious priest and his followers would never be able to return their native place. Because art has captivated them.
Again, the fever of the world has no hand to touch the artistic beauty of the urn. The world of art is far above “all breathing human passion” and there is no “burning fore head” and “parching tongue” in the world of art.: -
“All breathing human passion far above,
That leaves a heart high sorrowful and cloyed.
A burning fore head and a parching tongue”
Hence, everything in the world of art is ever new, ever warm. There is no change in the world of art.
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