The speaker asks questions of the urn. The poem's rhythms are slow and he depicts the urn as "unravish'd," untouched for centuries. The urn has existed in "silence" and a time that is not of this world, but "slow time." The poet questions the story of its men and women: "What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?"
The first four lines contrast the ideal and the real. The last six lines point out the drawbacks of frozen time. This is reinforced through Keats' use of negative phrasing, "canst not leave," "nor ever can," "never, never canst." Keats reminds the young man depicted on the urn that his lady will remain forever beautiful, and their love eternal, though unfulfilled: "...For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair."
Keats calls the trees portrayed on the urn "happy, happy boughs" because they will keep their leaves forever; they will never change their image. The repetition of the word "happy" may be ironic, as the happiness of those whose story the urn tells can never be fulfilled, because it has become immortalized in a piece of art. Keats contrasts ephemeral real life with the preserved life represented on the urn.
Keats shows how art can stir the imagination by pondering the village that the depicted people come from. The poet imagines the little town empty of all its people and the streets "for evermore" silent.
Observing the urn enables Keats to ponder the lives of the people depicted in the scene and therefore eternity. He receives no answers from trying to unravel the mysteries of eternity. Keats concludes that the urn's message is, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty,---that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." According to English History.Net, "Scholars have been unable to agree to whom the last thirteen lines of the poem are addressed."