Keats: Poems Published in 1820 Part 16

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 grat.i.tude, 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 circ.u.mstance_, 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. _Persean 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 s.h.i.+eld.

l. 406. _chilly_: tears, not pa.s.sionate, 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 repet.i.tion 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. _Baalites of pelf_, wors.h.i.+ppers 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. x.x.xv. 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 . . . b.r.e.a.s.t.s._ 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. _b.u.t.tress'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. _Brus.h.i.+ng . . . 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.