Poem Lyrics

In Quiz Show, Rob Morrow sez to Ralph Fiennes, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That's all ye know on earth and all ye need to know." quoting the Keats poem. Of course, in the Keats poem, the truth being told is like big t truth, the things which are philosophically true and awesome and all that, whereas in Quiz Show, the truth being talked about is that Ralph Fiennes' character is cheating on a tv game show. But what I've always liked about the use of that quote in the movie is Morrow's delivery, "all yuh need ta know," changing the "ye" into the very unaccented common pronunciation of "you," and "to" delivered likewise.

Here's what the University of Toronto's Ian Lancashire has to say in his annotation to these lines.

Beauty and truth are associated several times in Keats's letters: "What the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth" (Nov. 22, 1817); ". . . in close relationship of Beauty and Truth" (Dec. 21, 1817); "I can never feel certain of a truth but from a clear perception of its Beauty" (Dec. 31, 1818). When the poem was first published in Annals of the Fine Arts, the last two lines were without quotation marks. In Lamia, etc., "Beauty is truth, truth beauty" was set in quotation marks as words of the urn, the rest being comment by the poet. This reading has caused unnecessary grammatical confusion. Keats was ill when Lamia, etc., was being prepared for the press, and we do not know who introduced the limited quotation. Our text follows the example of the Riverside edition (Douglas Bush, ed.) in putting the last two lines in quotation marks.

What these annotations fail to point out is that this poem also inspired Minty to create a custom My Little Pony with

soft yellow-dyed body
Mane of salon-quality synthetic golden hair
styled in a series of permanent mini-braids
one matching mini-braid in tail (rerooted from G3 Sunny Daze II original)
Grecian urn symbol with Pegasus motif
Gold eyes with iridescent shimmer on eyelids; Gold accents on face
Permanent beaded jewelry: choker and three bracelets/anklets
Removable gold ribbon on tail

Minty also lets us know that she was listening to an Oxygen movie while making this custom My Little Pony.

love poems dot me dot uk decorates its Grecian Urn page with butterflies and comments only that:

A poem can paint a thousand images in your mind's eye. If you enjoyed this poem and appreciated the lyrics of Ode On A Grecian Urn by John Keats you will find even more poem lyrics by this famous author, together with their biography and picture, by simply clicking on the Poem Index link below !

Minty, I'm sure, feels that what the imagination seizes as Beauty must be truth.

I do.