The poem "Ode on a Grecian Urn", with its opening lines “Thou still unravished bride of quietness,/Thou foster child of silence and slow time”, was inspired by John Keats’ viewing of the #ParthenonMarbles in the Elgin Room of the #BritishMuseum in 1817. 1/6 
https://twitter.com/Keats_Shelley/status/1345007620072083457
A panel in the #Parthenon frieze arouses Keats’ attention where the procession features "that heifer lowing at the skies", with its upturned tilt and stretch and silken flanks. Keats’ sylvan historian can only but enquire: “What men or gods are these?" 2/6
What the imagination seizes as beauty in the case of the Elgin Marbles is a reflection of the paramount importance of aesthetic integrity. Truly, the Parthenon Sculptures are a "thing of beauty is a joy for ever” as John Keats wrote in the memorable first line of "Endymion". 3/6
The faithfulness of the Marbles to nature in all its sublimity and beauty inspired Keats to equate beauty and truth. But the fragile Romantic poet remained burdened by an “undescribable feud” and a sense of tension caused by the sculptures’ loss of their classical identity. 4/6
The symbolic urn is constructed of historical materials that are made up of fragments of an appropriated culture. Keats' Romantic imagination sees in the Parthenon sculptures that which epitomises all about the enduring human spirit: beauty is truth; truth beauty. 5/6
#Keats laments the dislocation and uprooting of these sculptures from their ancient past and the realisation that these scattered classical fragments, now locked in the British Museum as museum pieces, are not immune to the “rude wasting” of old time. They transcend history. 6/6
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