ode to an ode

Keats' poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn" is a speaker reflecting on his thoughts about an urn made in ancient Greece. A "foster-child of silence and slow time," an artifact that has been passed down through the ages and whose original creator is not alive nor likely known, tells unknown stories of people living at the time and holds only mystery to those who view it now. The speaker contemplates two scenes -- one depicting two people singing and piping, whom he interprets to be lovers, one pursuing the other, among trees in the springtime; the other, an emptied town, whose residents he believes have gone to some sacrificial ritual. It seems the speaker's biggest woe in viewing the urn is that the scenes it displays are forever frozen in time. The pursuing lover will never satiate his desire to be with the woman just out of his reach; the empty town will always be empty, with no one to explain why. I think the speaker also feels a sort of envy for the nature of the art, in that he wishes he could usurp time himself. He almost curses the object for its ability to "tease us out of thought" and make us feel, in effect, frozen in time. In the last lines, however, he realizes the good intention of the object and of all art to reveal to us truth through beauty, and vice versa.