Tempe is a valley in the northern Greek region of Thessaly.
In this line, “in Tempe or the dales of Arcady,” Keats makes an allusion to Arcadia, the birthplace of the god Zeus and “ Tempe,” a beautiful valley in Greece that was sacred to Apollo, the god of poetry and music (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”). What mad pursuit? Of dieties or mortals, or of both, In Tempe or the dales of Arcady? What pipes and timbrels? The "dales of Arcady" are the valleys of Arcadia, a state in ancient Greece often used as a symbol of the pastoral ideal. What struggle to escape? What wild ecstasy?
As Keats envisions it, the role of art is to identify what is timeless in a particular image, object, or scene. What mad pursuit? What maidens loth? His use of allusion serves that very goal. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter: therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd, Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone: What mad pursuit? The romantic chase takes place in “Tempe or the dales of Arcady,” locations on the Greek peninsula, and yet the lover’s chase is a timeless part of human life. One way to parse the phrase is to say that objects and scenes of great beauty contain some form of truth for the beholder. "Ode on a Grecian Urn" was written by the influential English poet John Keats in 1819. What pipes and timbrels? What pipes and timbrels? What maidens loth?
What struggle to escape? Though Charles Swinburne called Keats’s early work “some of the most vulgar and fulsome doggrel ever whimpered by a vapid and effeminate rhymester in the sickly stage of whelphood,” he later wrote that “Ode on a Grecian Urn” was one of the poems “nearest to absolute perfection, to the triumphant achievement and accomplishment of the very utmost beauty possible to human words.”Born in 1795, John Keats was an English Romantic poet and author of three poems considered to be among the finest in the English language Conversely, truth itself—the elegant articulation of the world—brings its own illuminating beauty into the world. What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape.
What wild ecstasy? the side of urn and what “legend” they depict (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”). The allusions to Arcadia and Tempe establishes the the old age of the urn and brings to mind images of pastoral, idealistic beauty.
Indeed, the final wisdom of the urn has been a source of ongoing debate among poets, readers, and scholars for the last two centuries. . What men or gods are these? As is common in the poetry of John Keats, “Ode on a Grecian Urn” owes much of its subject matter to The poem concludes with a now-famous aphorism: "'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.'" There are debates over both Keats's intended meaning and the veracity of the aphorism. In this line, “in Tempe or the dales of Arcady,” Keats makes an allusion to Arcadia, the birthplace of the god Zeus and “Tempe,” a beautiful valley in Greece that was sacred to Apollo, the god of poetry and music (“Ode on a Grecian Urn”).
.) It is a complex, mysterious poem with a disarmingly simple set-up: an undefined speaker looks at a Grecian urn, which is decorated with evocative images of rustic and rural life in ancient Greece. Complete info about it can be read here. Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on; Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,