The Romantic period blossomed during a time of major "catharsis in world history: the American War of Independence and the French Revolution had cast long shadows" across the existing "world order" (Woods 15). Romantic writers presented themes of imagination, transcendence, individualism, and more, all based on the happenings of that time. John Keats' "Ode on a Grecian Urn" portrays the real world of pain contrasting with the fantasy world of joy. Within this poem the speaker attempts to "engage with the static immobility" of a sculpture (Woods 45). This sculpture, the Grecian urn, exists outside of time in the human sense; it doesn't age or die and it is "alien to all such concepts" (Woods 45). As the speaker meditates, Keats presents an intriguing paradox for the human figures carved into the urn. These figures are free from time, but they are simultaneously frozen in time. They do not have to confront aging or death, but neither can they have experience. Other paradoxes revealed are the "human and changeable" versus the "immortal and permanent, participation versus observation, and life versus art," all reflecting the mood and attitude of the Romantic period (Woods 46).
             In the first stanza The Grecian Urn is presented as a "historian" that tells a story through the depiction of scenes, containing figures, that seem to capture moments experienced in life (3). The urn exists in the real world which is subject to time and change; however, the urn itself and these frozen figures carved on it are unchanging and stand the test of time. The speaker notices the depiction of the "mad pursuit" of men and women and wonders what story lies behind the picture, "What men or gods are these? What struggle to escape? What wild ecstasy?" (8-9). He seems to get caught up emotionally in the excited
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