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75. _plaintive. _ It did not sound sad to Keats at first, but as it
dies away it takes colour from his own melancholy and sounds pathetic to
him. Cf. _Ode on Melancholy_: he finds both bliss and pain in the
contemplation of beauty.

ll. 76-8. _Past . . . glades. _ The whole country speeds past our eyes in
these three lines.


NOTES ON THE ODE ON A GRECIAN URN.

This poem is not, apparently, inspired by any one actual vase, but by
many Greek sculptures, some seen in the British Museum, some known only
from engravings. Keats, in his imagination, combines them all into one
work of supreme beauty.
Perhaps Keats had some recollection of Wordsworth's sonnet 'Upon the
sight of a beautiful picture,' beginning 'Praised be the art. '

PAGE 113. l. 2. _foster-child. _ The child of its maker, but preserved
and cared for by these foster-parents.

l. 7. _Tempe_ was a famous glen in Thessaly.

_Arcady. _ Arcadia, a very mountainous country, the centre of the
Peloponnese, was the last stronghold of the aboriginal Greeks. The
people were largely shepherds and goatherds, and Pan was a local
Arcadian god till the Persian wars (c. 400 B. C. ). In late Greek and in
Roman pastoral poetry, as in modern literature, Arcadia is a sort of
ideal land of poetic shepherds.