ll. 191-200. Cf. Ode on Melancholy, where Keats tells us that melancholy lives with Beauty, joy, pleasure, and delight. Lamia can separate the elements and give beauty and pleasure unalloyed.
l. 195. Intrigue with the specious chaos, enter on an understanding with the fair-looking confusion of joy and pain.
l. 198. unshent, unreproached.
Page 15. l. 207. Nereids, sea-nymphs.
l. 208. Thetis, one of the sea deities.
l. 210. glutinous, referring to the sticky substance which oozes from the pine-trunk. Cf. Comus, l. 917, 'smeared with gums of glutinous heat.'
l. 212. Mulciber, Vulcan, the smith of the Gods. His fall from Heaven is described by Milton, Paradise Lost, i. 739-42.
piazzian, forming covered walks supported by pillars, a word coined by Keats.
Page 16. l. 236. In the calm'd . . . shades. In consideration of Plato's mystic and imaginative philosophy.
Page 17. l. 248. Refers to the story of Orpheus' attempt to rescue his wife Eurydice from Hades. With his exquisite music he charmed Cerberus, the fierce dog who guarded hell-gates, into submission, and won Pluto's consent that he should lead Eurydice back to the upper world on one condition—that he would not look back to see that she was following. When he was almost at the gates, love and curiosity overpowered him, and he looked back—to see Eurydice fall back into Hades whence he now might never win her.
Page 18. l. 262. thy far wishes, your wishes when you are far off.
l. 265. Pleiad. The Pleiades are seven stars making a constellation. Cf. Walt Whitman, 'On the beach at night.'
ll. 266-7. keep in tune Thy spheres. Refers to the music which the heavenly bodies were supposed to make as they moved round the earth. Cf. Merchant of Venice, v. i. 60.
Page 20. l. 294. new lips. Cf. l. 191
l. 297. Into another, i.e. into the trance of passion from which he only wakes to die.
Page 21. l. 320. Adonian feast. Adonis was a beautiful youth beloved of Venus. He was killed by a wild boar when hunting, and Venus then had him borne to Elysium, where he sleeps pillowed on flowers. Cf. Endymion, ii. 387.
Page 22. l. 329. Peris, in Persian story fairies, descended from the fallen angels.
ll. 330-2. The vulgarity of these lines we may attribute partly to the influence of Leigh Hunt, who himself wrote of
It was an influence which Keats, with the development of his own character and genius, was rapidly outgrowing.
l. 333. Pyrrha's pebbles. There is a legend that, after the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha cast stones behind them which became men, thus re-peopling the world.
Page 23. ll. 350-4. Keats brings the very atmosphere of a dream about us in these lines, and makes us hear the murmur of the city as something remote from the chief actors.
l. 352. lewd, ignorant. The original meaning of the word which came later to mean dissolute.
Page 24. l. 360. corniced shade. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, ix, 'Buttress'd from moonlight.'
ll. 363-77. Note the feeling of fate in the first appearance of Apollonius.
Page 25. l. 377. dreams. Lycius is conscious that it is an illusion even whilst he yields himself up to it.
l. 386. Aeolian. Aeolus was the god of the winds.
Page 26. l. 394. flitter-winged. Imagining the poem winging its way along like a bird. Flitter, cf. flittermouse = bat.
Part II.
Page 27. ll. 1-9. Again a passage unworthy of Keats's genius. Perhaps the attempt to be light, like his seventeenth-century model, Dryden, led him for the moment to adopt something of the cynicism of that age about love.
ll. 7-9. i.e. If Lycius had lived longer his experience might have either contradicted or corroborated this saying.
Page 28. l. 27. Deafening, in the unusual sense of making inaudible.
ll. 27-8. came a thrill Of trumpets. From the first moment that the outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man who, like Lycius, is living a life of selfish pleasure.
Page 29. l. 39. passing bell. Either the bell rung for a condemned man the night before his execution, or the bell rung when a man was dying that men might pray for the departing soul.
Page 31. ll. 72-4. Besides . . . new. An indication of the selfish nature of Lycius's love.
l. 80. serpent. See how skilfully this allusion is introduced and our attention called to it by his very denial that it applies to Lamia.
Page 32. l. 97. I neglect the holy rite. It is her duty to burn incense and tend the sepulchres of her dead kindred.
Page 33. l. 107. blushing. We see in the glow of the sunset a reflection of the blush of the bride.
Page 34. ll. 122-3. sole perhaps . . . roof. Notice that Keats only says 'perhaps', but it gives a trembling unreality at once to the magic palace. Cf. Coleridge's Kubla Khan:
Page 36. l. 155. demesne, dwelling. More commonly a domain. Hyperion, i. 298. Sonnet—'On first looking into Chapman's Homer.'
Page 38. l. 187. Ceres' horn. Ceres was the goddess of harvest, the mother of Proserpine (Lamia, i. 63, note). Her horn is filled with the fruits of the earth, and is symbolic of plenty.
Page 39. l. 200. vowel'd undersong, in contrast to the harsh, guttural and consonantal sound of Teutonic languages.
Page 40. l. 213. meridian, mid-day. Bacchus was supreme, as is the sun at mid-day.
ll. 215-29. Cf. The Winter's Tale, iv. iv. 73, &c., where Perdita gives to each guest suitable flowers. Cf. also Ophelia's flowers, Hamlet, iv. v. 175, etc.
l. 217. osier'd gold. The gold was woven into baskets, as though it were osiers.
l. 224. willow, the weeping willow, so-called because its branches with their long leaves droop to the ground, like dropping tears. It has always been sacred to deserted or unhappy lovers. Cf. Othello, iv. iii. 24 seq.
adder's tongue. For was she not a serpent?
l. 226. thyrsus. A rod wreathed with ivy and crowned with a fir-cone, used by Bacchus and his followers.
l. 228. spear-grass . . . thistle. Because of what he is about to do.
Page 41. ll. 229-38. Not to be taken as a serious expression of Keats's view of life. Rather he is looking at it, at this moment, through the eyes of the chief actors in his drama, and feeling with them.
Page 43. l. 263. Notice the horror of the deadly hush and the sudden fading of the flowers.
l. 266. step by step, prepares us for the thought of the silence as a horrid presence.
ll. 274-5. to illume the deep-recessed vision. We at once see her dull and sunken eyes.
Page 45. l. 301. perceant, piercing—a Spenserian word.
INTRODUCTION TO ISABELLA AND THE EVE OF ST. AGNES
In Lamia and Hyperion, as in Endymion, we find Keats inspired by classic story, though the inspiration in each case came to him through Elizabethan writers. Here, on the other hand, mediaeval legend is his inspiration; the 'faery broods' have driven 'nymph and satyr from the prosperous woods'. Akin to the Greeks as he was in spirit, in his instinctive personification of the lovely manifestations of nature, his style and method were really more naturally suited to the portrayal of mediaeval scenes, where he found the richness and warmth of colour in which his soul delighted.
The story of Isabella he took from Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the fourteenth century, whose Decameron, a collection of one hundred stories, has been a store-house of plots for English writers. By Boccaccio the tale is very shortly and simply told, being evidently interesting to him mainly for its plot. Keats was attracted to it not so much by the action as by the passion involved, so that his enlargement of it means little elaboration of incident, but very much more dwelling on the psychological aspect. That is to say, he does not care so much what happens, as what the personages of the poem think and feel.
Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo, is passed over in a line—'Thus was Lorenzo slain and buried in,' the next line, 'There, in that forest, did his great love cease,' bringing us back at once from the physical reality of the murder to the thought of his love, which is to Keats the central fact of the story.
In the delineation of Isabella, her first tender passion of love, her agony of apprehension giving way to dull despair, her sudden wakening to a brief period of frenzied action, described in stanzas of incomparable dramatic force, and the 'peace' which followed when she
culminating in the piteous death 'too lone and incomplete'—in the delineation of all this Keats shows supreme power and insight.
In the conception, too, of the tragic loneliness of Lorenzo's ghost we feel that nothing could be changed, added, or taken away.
Not quite equally happy are the descriptions of the cruel brothers, and of Lorenzo as the young lover. There is a tendency to exaggerate both their inhumanity and his gentleness, for purposes of contrast, which weakens where it would give strength.
The Eve of St. Agnes, founded on a popular mediaeval legend, not being a tragedy like Isabella, cannot be expected to rival it in depth and intensity; but in every other poetic quality it equals, where it does not surpass, the former poem.
To be specially noted is the skilful use which Keats here makes of contrast—between the cruel cold without and the warm love within; the palsied age of the Bedesman and Angela, and the eager youth of Porphyro and Madeline; the noise and revel and the hush of Madeline's bedroom, and, as Mr. Colvin has pointed out, in the moonlight which, chill and sepulchral when it strikes elsewhere, to Madeline is as a halo of glory, an angelic light.
A mysterious charm is given to the poem by the way in which Keats endows inanimate things with a sort of half-conscious life. The knights and ladies of stone arouse the bedesman's shuddering sympathy when he thinks of the cold they must be enduring; 'the carven angels' 'star'd' 'eager-eyed' from the roof of the chapel, and the scutcheon in Madeline's window 'blush'd with blood of queens and kings'.
Keats's characteristic method of description—the way in which, by his masterly choice of significant detail, he gives us the whole feeling of the situation, is here seen in its perfection. In stanza 1 each line is a picture and each picture contributes to the whole effect of painful chill. The silence of the sheep, the old man's breath visible in the frosty air,—these are things which many people would not notice, but it is such little things that make the whole scene real to us.
There is another method of description, quite as beautiful in its way, which Coleridge adopted with magic effect in Christabel. This is to use the power of suggestion, to say very little, but that little of a kind to awaken the reader's imagination and make him complete the picture. For example, we are told of Christabel—
Compare this with stanza xxvi of The Eve of St. Agnes.
That Keats was a master of both ways of obtaining a romantic effect is shown by his La Belle Dame Sans Merci, considered by some people his masterpiece, where the rich detail of The Eve of St. Agnes is replaced by reserve and suggestion.
As the poem was not included in the volume published in 1820, it is given here.
NOTES ON ISABELLA.
Metre. The ottava rima of the Italians, the natural outcome of Keats's turning to Italy for his story. This stanza had been used by Chaucer and the Elizabethans, and recently by Hookham Frere in The Monks and the Giants and by Byron in Don Juan. Compare Keats's use of the form with that of either of his contemporaries, and notice how he avoids the epigrammatic close, telling in satire and mock-heroic, but inappropriate to a serious and romantic poem.
Page 49. l. 2. palmer, pilgrim. As the pilgrim seeks for a shrine where, through the patron saint, he may worship God, so Lorenzo needs a woman to worship, through whom he may worship Love.
Page 50. l. 21. constant as her vespers, as often as she said her evening-prayers.
Page 51. l. 34. within . . . domain, where it should, naturally, have been rosy.
Page 52. l. 46. Fever'd . . . bridge. Made his sense of her worth more passionate.
ll. 51-2. wed To every symbol. Able to read every sign.
Page 53. l. 62. fear, make afraid. So used by Shakespeare: e.g. 'Fear boys with bugs,' Taming of the Shrew, i. ii. 211.
l. 64. shrive, confess. As the pilgrim cannot be at peace till he has confessed his sins and received absolution, so Lorenzo feels the necessity of confessing his love.
Page 54. ll. 81-2. before the dusk . . . veil. A vivid picture of the twilight time, after sunset, but before it is dark enough for the stars to shine brightly.
ll. 83-4. The repetition of the same words helps us to feel the unchanging nature of their devotion and joy in one another.
Page 55. l. 91. in fee, in payment for their trouble.
l. 95. Theseus' spouse. Ariadne, who was deserted by Theseus after having saved his life and left her home for him. Odyssey, xi. 321-5.
l. 99. Dido. Queen of Carthage, whom Aeneas, in his wanderings, wooed and would have married, but the Gods bade him leave her.
silent . . . undergrove. When Aeneas saw Dido in Hades, amongst those who had died for love, he spoke to her pityingly. But she answered him not a word, turning from him into the grove to Lychaeus, her former husband, who comforted her. Vergil, Aeneid, Bk. VI, l. 450 ff.
l. 103. almsmen, receivers of alms, since they take honey from the flowers.
Page 56. l. 107. swelt, faint. Cf. Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, iii. 347.
l. 109. proud-quiver'd, proudly girt with quivers of arrows.
l. 112. rich-ored driftings. The sand of the river in which gold was to be found.
Page 57. l. 124. lazar, leper, or any wretched beggar; from the parable of Dives and Lazarus.
stairs, steps on which they sat to beg.
l. 125. red-lin'd accounts, vividly picturing their neat account-books, and at the same time, perhaps, suggesting the human blood for which their accumulation of wealth was responsible.
l. 130. gainful cowardice. A telling expression for the dread of loss which haunts so many wealthy people.
l. 133. hawks . . . forests. As a hawk pounces on its prey, so they fell on the trading-vessels which put into port.
ll. 133-4. the untired . . . lies. They were always ready for any dishonourable transaction by which money might be made.
l. 134. ducats. Italian pieces of money worth about 4s. 4d. Cf. Shylock, Merchant of Venice, ii. vii. 15, 'My ducats.'
l. 135. Quick . . . away. They would undertake to fleece unsuspecting strangers in their town.
Page 58. l. 137. ledger-men. As if they only lived in their account-books. Cf. l. 142.
l. 140. Hot Egypt's pest, the plague of Egypt.
ll. 145-52. As in Lycidas Milton apologizes for the introduction of his attack on the Church, so Keats apologizes for the introduction of this outburst of indignation against cruel and dishonourable dealers, which he feels is unsuited to the tender and pitiful story.
l. 150. ghittern, an instrument like a guitar, strung with wire.
Page 59. ll. 153-60. Keats wants to make it clear that he is not trying to surpass Boccaccio, but to give him currency amongst English-speaking people.
l. 159. stead thee, do thee service.
l. 168. olive-trees. In which (through the oil they yield) a great part of the wealth of the Italians lies.
Page 60. l. 174. Cut . . . bone. This is not only a vivid way of describing the banishment of all their natural pity. It also, by the metaphor used, gives us a sort of premonitory shudder as at Lorenzo's death. Indeed, in that moment the murder is, to all intents and purposes, done. In stanza xxvii they are described as riding 'with their murder'd man'.
Page 61. ll. 187-8. ere . . . eglantine. The sun, drying up the dew drop by drop from the sweet-briar is pictured as passing beads along a string, as the Roman Catholics do when they say their prayers.
Page 62. l. 209. their . . . man. Cf. l. 174, note. Notice the extraordinary vividness of the picture here—the quiet rural scene and the intrusion of human passion with the reflection in the clear water of the pale murderers, sick with suspense, and the unsuspecting victim, full of glowing life.
l. 212. bream, a kind of fish found in lakes and deep water. Obviously Keats was not an angler.
freshets, little streams of fresh water.
Page 63. l. 217. Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated—no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity rather than of horror.
ll. 219-20. Ah . . . loneliness. We perpetually come upon this old belief—that the souls of the murdered cannot rest in peace. Cf. Hamlet, i. v. 8, &c.
l. 221. break-covert . . . sin. The blood-hounds employed for tracking down a murderer will find him under any concealment, and never rest till he is found. So restless is the soul of the victim.
l. 222. They . . . water. That water which had reflected the three faces as they went across.
tease, torment.
l. 223. convulsed spur, they spurred their horses violently and uncertainly, scarce knowing what they did.
l. 224. Each richer . . . murderer. This is what they have gained by their deed—the guilt of murder—that is all.
l. 229. stifling: partly literal, since the widow's weed is close-wrapping and voluminous—partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of fate stifles complaint.
l. 230. accursed bands. So long as a man hopes he is not free, but at the mercy of continual imaginings and fresh disappointments. When hope is laid aside, fear and disappointment go with it.
Page 64. l. 241. Selfishness, Love's cousin. For the two aspects of love, as a selfish and unselfish passion, see Blake's two poems, Love seeketh only self to please, and, Love seeketh not itself to please.
l. 242. single breast, one-thoughted, being full of love for Lorenzo.
Page 65. ll. 249 seq. Cf. Shelley's Ode to the West Wind.
l. 252. roundelay, a dance in a circle.
l. 259. Striving . . . itself. Her distrust of her brothers is shown in her effort not to betray her fears to them.
dungeon climes. Wherever it is, it is a prison which keeps him from her. Cf. Hamlet, ii. ii. 250-4.
l. 262. Hinnom's Vale, the valley of Moloch's sacrifices, Paradise Lost, i. 392-405.
l. 264. snowy shroud, a truly prophetic dream.
Page 66. ll. 267 seq. These comparisons help us to realize her experience as sharp anguish, rousing her from the lethargy of despair, and endowing her for a brief space with almost supernatural energy and willpower.
Page 67. l. 286. palsied Druid. The Druids, or priests of ancient Britain, are always pictured as old men with long beards. The conception of such an old man, tremblingly trying to get music from a broken harp, adds to the pathos and mystery of the vision.
l. 288. Like . . . among. Take this line word by word, and see how many different ideas go to create the incomparably ghostly effect.
ll. 289 seq. Horror is skilfully kept from this picture and only tragedy left. The horror is for the eyes of his murderers, not for his love.
l. 292. unthread . . . woof. His narration and explanation of what has gone before is pictured as the disentangling of woven threads.
l. 293. darken'd. In many senses, since their crime was (1) concealed from Isabella, (2) darkly evil, (3) done in the darkness of the wood.
Page 68. ll. 305 seq. The whole sound of this stanza is that of a faint and far-away echo.
l. 308. knelling. Every sound is like a death-bell to him.
Page 69. l. 316. That paleness. Her paleness showing her great love for him; and, moreover, indicating that they will soon be reunited.
l. 317. bright abyss, the bright hollow of heaven.
l. 322. The atom . . . turmoil. Every one must know the sensation of looking into the darkness, straining one's eyes, until the darkness itself seems to be composed of moving atoms. The experience with which Keats, in the next lines, compares it, is, we are told, a common experience in the early stages of consumption.
Page 70. l. 334. school'd my infancy. She was as a child in her ignorance of evil, and he has taught her the hard lesson that our misery is not always due to the dealings of a blind fate, but sometimes to the deliberate crime and cruelty of those whom we have trusted.
l. 344. forest-hearse. To Isabella the whole forest is but the receptacle of her lover's corpse.
Page 71. l. 347. champaign, country. We can picture Isabel, as they 'creep' along, furtively glancing round, and then producing her knife with a smile so terrible that the old nurse can only fear that she is delirious, as her sudden vigour would also suggest.
Page 72. st. xlvi-xlviii. These are the stanzas of which Lamb says, 'there is nothing more awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and moving in sentiment, in Dante, in Chaucer, or in Spenser'—and again, after an appreciation of Lamia, whose fairy splendours are 'for younger impressibilities', he reverts to them, saying: 'To us an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.'—The New Times, July 19, 1820.
l. 361. fresh-thrown mould, a corroboration of her fears. Mr. Colvin has pointed out how the horror is throughout relieved by the beauty of the images called up by the similes, e.g. 'a crystal well,' 'a native lily of the dell.'
l. 370. Her silk . . . phantasies, i.e. which she had embroidered fancifully for him.
Page 73. l. 385. wormy circumstance, ghastly detail. Keats envies the un-self-conscious simplicity of the old ballad-writers in treating such a theme as this, and bids the reader turn to Boccaccio, whose description of the scene he cannot hope to rival. Boccaccio writes: 'Nor had she dug long before she found the body of her hapless lover, whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not do so, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and laid it in the lap of the maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been seen by none, and went home.'
Page 74. l. 393. Perséan sword. The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at her reflection in his shield.
l. 406. chilly: tears, not passionate, but of cold despair.
Page 75. l. 410. pluck'd in Araby. Cf. Lady Macbeth, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' Macbeth, v. ii. 55.
l. 412. serpent-pipe, twisted pipe.
l. 416. Sweet Basil, a fragrant aromatic plant.
ll. 417-20. The repetition makes us feel the monotony of her days and nights of grief.
Page 76. l. 432. leafits, leaflets, little leaves. An old botanical term, but obsolete in Keats's time. Coleridge uses it in l. 65 of 'The Nightingale' in Lyrical Ballads. In later editions he altered it to 'leaflets'.
l. 436. Lethean, in Hades, the dark underworld of the dead. Compare the conception of melancholy in the Ode on Melancholy, where it is said to neighbour joy. Contrast Stanza lxi.
l. 439. cypress, dark trees which in Italy are always planted in cemeteries. They stand by Keats's own grave.
Page 77. l. 442. Melpomene, the Muse of tragedy.
l. 451. Baälites of pelf, worshippers of ill-gotten gains.
l. 453. elf, man. The word is used in this sense by Spenser in The Faerie Queene.
Page 78. l. 467. chapel-shrift, confession. Cf. l. 64.
ll. 469-72. And when . . . hair. The pathos of this picture is intensified by its suggestions of the wife- and mother-hood which Isabel can now never know. Cf. st. xlvii, where the idea is still more beautifully suggested.
Page 79. l. 475. vile . . . spot. The one touch of descriptive horror—powerful in its reticence.
Page 80. l. 489. on . . . things. Her love and her hope is with the dead rather than with the living.
l. 492. lorn voice. Cf. st. xxxv. She is approaching her lover. Note that in each case the metaphor is of a stringed instrument.
l. 493. Pilgrim in his wanderings. Cf. st. i, 'a young palmer in Love's eye.'
l. 503. burthen, refrain. Cf. Tempest, i. ii. Ariel's songs.
NOTES ON THE EVE OF ST. AGNES.
See Introduction to Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes, p. 212.
St. Agnes was a martyr of the Christian Church who was beheaded just outside Rome in 304 because she refused to marry a Pagan, holding herself to be a bride of Christ. She was only 13—so small and slender that the smallest fetters they could find slipped over her little wrists and fell to the ground. But they stripped, tortured, and killed her. A week after her death her parents dreamed that they saw her in glory with a white lamb, the sign of purity, beside her. Hence she is always pictured with lambs (as her name signifies), and to the place of her martyrdom two lambs are yearly taken on the anniversary and blessed. Then their wool is cut off and woven by the nuns into the archbishop's cloak, or pallium (see l. 70).
For the legend connected with the Eve of the Saint's anniversary, to which Keats refers, see st. vi.
Metre. That of the Faerie Queene.
Page 83. ll. 5-6. told His rosary. Cf. Isabella, ll. 87-8.
l. 8. without a death. The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul.
Page 84. l. 12. meagre, barefoot, wan. Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an extraordinary force.
l. 15. purgatorial rails, rails which enclose them in a place of torture.
l. 16. dumb orat'ries. The transference of the adjective from person to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate things. Cf. Hyperion, iii. 8; Ode to a Nightingale, l. 66.
l. 22. already . . . rung. He was dead to the world. But this hint should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem.
Page 85. l. 31. 'gan to chide. l. 32. ready with their pride. l. 34. ever eager-eyed. l. 36. with hair . . . breasts. As if trumpets, rooms, and carved angels were all alive. See Introduction, p. 212.
l. 37. argent, silver. They were all glittering with rich robes and arms.
Page 86. l. 56. yearning . . . pain, expressing all the exquisite beauty and pathos of the music; and moreover seeming to give it conscious life.
Page 87. l. 64. danc'd, conveying all her restlessness and impatience as well as the lightness of her step.
l. 70. amort, deadened, dull. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, iv. iii. 36, 'What sweeting! all amort.'
l. 71. See note on St. Agnes, p. 224.
l. 77. Buttress'd from moonlight. A picture of the castle and of the night, as well as of Porphyro's position.
Page 88. ll. 82 seq. Compare the situation of these lovers with that of Romeo and Juliet.
l. 90. beldame, old woman. Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense—'hag'—but it is not so used here. The word is used by Spenser in its derivative sense, 'Fair lady,' Faerie Queene, ii. 43.
Page 89. l. 110. Brushing . . . plume. This line both adds to our picture of Porphyro and vividly brings before us the character of the place he was entering—unsuited to the splendid cavalier.
l. 113. Pale, lattic'd, chill. Cf. l. 12, note.
l. 115. by the holy loom, on which the nuns spin. See l. 71 and note on St. Agnes, p. 224.
Page 90. l. 120. Thou must . . . sieve. Supposed to be one of the commonest signs of supernatural power. Cf. Macbeth, i. iii. 8.
l. 133. brook, check. An incorrect use of the word, which really means bear or permit.
Page 92. ll. 155-6. churchyard . . . toll. Unconscious prophecy. Cf. The Bedesman, l. 22.
l. 168. While . . . coverlet. All the wonders of Madeline's imagination.
l. 171. Since Merlin . . . debt. Referring to the old legend that Merlin had for father an incubus or demon, and was himself a demon of evil, though his innate wickedness was driven out by baptism. Thus his 'debt' to the demon was his existence, which he paid when Vivien compassed his destruction by means of a spell which he had taught her. Keats refers to the storm which is said to have raged that night, which Tennyson also describes in Merlin and Vivien. The source whence the story came to Keats has not been ascertained.
Page 93. l. 173. cates, provisions. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, ii. i. 187:—