eternal beauty
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The eternal beauty of art is exemplified in contrasting approaches with a combination of obsession and appreciation, in Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" and Browning's "My Last Duchess".
Both these pieces portray art to be beautiful in different manners. In Keats' poem, the speaker articulates his admiration for the urn and describes his reaction to it with images of maidens, pipers, and other Greeks. "A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme", signifies how there is a story written on this Urn, human figures of a maiden and a piper are carved into the urn. The speaker asks, "What struggle to escape?" showing how the couple is free from time, but concurrently they are frozen in time at that moment (line 9). The author demonstrates a sense of ideal beauty, as he examines the piper playing to his lover beneath the tree: "heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard are sweeter, therefore ye soft pipes play on" (lines 11-12).
The speaker expresses obsession with one part of the urn, showing a youth about to kiss a maid because he will never actually kiss his love, she will remain fair with eternally unchanging beauty and they will forever be in love: "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!" The painted trees will also be perfect, never losing their leaves: "Ah, happy, happy boughs! That cannot shed your leaves, nor ever bid the spring adieu"...