_lazar_, leper, or any
wretched
beggar; from the
parable of Dives and Lazarus.
parable of Dives and Lazarus.
Keats
, 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
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 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--
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 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 4_s. _ 4_d. _ 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 .
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
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 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--
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 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 4_s. _ 4_d. _ 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 .
