unds 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.

PAGE 114. ll. 17-18. _Bold . . . goal._ The one thing denied to the
figures--actual life. But Keats quickly turns to their rich
compensations.

PAGE 115. ll. 28-30. _All . . . tongue._ Cf. Shelley's _To a Skylark_:

Thou lovest--but ne'er knew love's sad satiety.

ll. 31 seq. Keats is now looking at the other side of the urn. This
verse strongly recalls certain parts of the frieze of the Parthenon
(British Museum).

PAGE 116. l. 41. _Attic_, Greek.

_brede_, embroidery. Cf. _Lamia_, i. 159. Here used of carving.

l. 44. _tease us out of thought._ Make us think till thought is lost in
mystery.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO PSYCHE.

In one of his long journal-letters to his brother George, Keats writes,
at the beginning of May, 1819: 'The following poem--the last I have
written--is the first and the only one with which I have taken even
moderate pains. I have for the most part dashed off my lines in a hurry.
This I have done leisurely--I think it reads the more richly for it, and
will I hope encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceable
and healthy spirit. You must recollect that Psyche was not embodied as a
goddess before the time of Apuleius the Platonist, who lived after the
Augustan age, and consequently the goddess was never worshipped or
sacrificed to with any