This poem presents us with the contrast between the permanence of art against the fluid impermanent human realm of sensuality and desire.
Though it depicts a passionate, happy scene, though a symbol of truth and beauty, the urn, nevertheless, presents a "Cold Pastoral", not real in sensual emotional terms, unable to respond to the poet's questions.
The paradoxes of this contrast are explored, that, for example, the urn is "silent", but on it play "pipes and timbrels". The meaning of the urn is that it signifies the ideal, the necessary quest for truth, and thus it is "a friend to man".