Keats: Poems Published in 1820 Part 14

Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo, is pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sion 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

Forgot the stars, the moon, the sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not--

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 surpa.s.s, 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--

Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.

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.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the Lake And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms So haggard, and so woe begone?

The Squirrel's granary is full And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone, She look'd at me as she did love And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A Faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.

And there she lulled me asleep, And there I dream'd, Ah! Woe betide!

The latest dream I ever dreamt On the cold hill side.

I saw pale Kings, and Princes too, Pale warriors, death pale were they all; They cried, La belle dame sans merci, Thee hath in thrall.

I saw their starv'd lips in the gloam With horrid warning gaped wide, And I awoke, and found me here On the cold hill's side.

And this is why I sojourn here Alone and palely loitering; Though the sedge is withered from the Lake And no birds sing. . ..

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 wors.h.i.+p G.o.d, so Lorenzo needs a woman to wors.h.i.+p, through whom he may wors.h.i.+p 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 pa.s.sionate.

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 s.h.i.+ne brightly.

ll. 83-4. The repet.i.tion 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 G.o.ds 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.