Monday, August 11, 2008

Spanish Steps



John Keats died in 1821 in the house in the right foreground.

'Beauty is truth; truth, beauty'--that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
- John Keats, Ode to a Grecian Urn [1819]

-- surely the most famous equation in English literature. The exact meaning of those lines is disputed; no less a critic than T.S. Eliot considered them a blight upon an otherwise beautiful poem.