Keats ode on a Grecian urn has its wrong, false terrible final couplet to drive home the theme that completion and the passing of time ruins things by ruining the poem that would be better left unfinished. See t s eliots essay of the poem as a jumping off point. I believe Burke and Brooks also have essays on it
Suppose the whole final couplet is false, so it’s not all we know on earth, not all we need to know. What then? Do we get liars paradoxes based on whether we thing the couplet is true or false (beautiful or ugly)?
It’s an expression of great confidence to deliberately ruin a poem to make a point. This explains so called blots (whose theory was it again?). Can’t find it, will need to look at the hardcopy :/ nope not there, but JF Martel’s book art and artifice has this theory. Blots
Poem
Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts 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.”
Keat’s Ode on a Grecian Urn ends with these final lines;
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
Eliot, in his essay on Dante, called the lines ‘a serious blemish on a beautiful poem’. Serious is the right word. A serious blemish is an earnest blemish, and an earnest blemish is almost an intentional blemish.
Earlier in the same ode, Keats wrote;
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!
In other words, completed poems are sweet, but those uncomplete are sweeter. By ending with the bitterness of false rhetoric, Keats demonstrates the truth of the poem at the cost of it’s beauty. As well as emphasising the falseness of the final equivocation, this is an extreme show of confidence in the poem. Keats knew he had beauty to spare, so he could afford to exemplify his theme with ugliness.
the deliberate use of ugliness to make a point, or make something more beautiful. It is very brave. It’s like if people did kintsugi with shit instead of gold.