_glutinous_, referring to the sticky
substance
which oozes from
the pine-trunk.
the pine-trunk.
Keats
l. 5. _Dryads_, wood-nymphs, who lived in trees. The life of each
terminated with that of the tree over which she presided. Cf. Landor's
'Hamadryad'.
l. 5. _Fauns. _ The Roman name corresponding to the Greek Satyr.
l. 7. _Hermes_, or Mercury, the messenger of the Gods. He is always
represented with winged shoes, a winged helmet, and a winged staff,
bound about with living serpents.
PAGE 4. l. 15. _Tritons_, sea-gods, half-man, half-fish. Cf. Wordsworth,
'Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn' (Sonnet--'The World is too
much with us').
l. 19. _unknown to any Muse_, beyond the imagination of any poet.
PAGE 5. l. 28. _passion new. _ He has often before been to earth on
similar errands. Cf. _ever-smitten_, l. 7, also ll. 80-93.
l. 42. _dove-footed. _ Cf. note on l. 7.
PAGE 6. l. 46. _cirque-couchant_, lying twisted into a circle. Cf.
_wreathed tomb_, l. 38.
l. 47. _gordian_, knotted, from the famous knot in the harness of
Gordius, King of Phrygia, which only the conqueror of the world was to
be able to untie. Alexander cut it with his sword. Cf. _Henry V_, I. i.
46.
l. 58. _Ariadne's tiar. _ Ariadne was a nymph beloved of Bacchus, the god
of wine. He gave her a crown of seven stars, which, after her death, was
made into a constellation. Keats has, no doubt, in his mind Titian's
picture of Bacchus and Ariadne in the National Gallery. Cf. _Ode to
Sorrow_, _Endymion_.
PAGE 7. l. 63. _As Proserpine . . . air. _ Proserpine, gathering flowers
in the Vale of Enna, in Sicily, was carried off by Pluto, the king of
the underworld, to be his queen. Cf. _Winter's Tale_, IV. iii, and
_Paradise Lost_, iv. 268, known to be a favourite passage with Keats.
l. 75. _his throbbing . . . moan. _ Cf. _Hyperion_, iii. 81.
l. 77. _as morning breaks_, the freshness and splendour of the youthful
god.
PAGE 8. l. 78. _Phoebean dart_, a ray of the sun, Phoebus being the god
of the sun.
l. 80. _Too gentle Hermes. _ Cf. l. 28 and note.
l. 81. _not delay'd_: classical construction. See Introduction to
Hyperion.
_Star of Lethe. _ Hermes is so called because he had to lead the souls of
the dead to Hades, where was Lethe, the river of forgetfulness. Lamb
comments: '. . . Hermes, the _Star of Lethe_, as he is called by one of
those prodigal phrases which Mr. Keats abounds in, which are each a poem
in a word, and which in this instance lays open to us at once, like a
picture, all the dim regions and their habitants, and the sudden coming
of a celestial among them. '
l. 91. The line dances along like a leaf before the wind.
l. 92. Miltonic construction and phraseology.
PAGE 9. l. 98. _weary tendrils_, tired with holding up the boughs, heavy
with fruit.
l. 103. _Silenus_, the nurse and teacher of Bacchus--a demigod of the
woods.
PAGE 10. l. 115. _Circean. _ Circe was the great enchantress who turned
the followers of Ulysses into swine. Cf. _Comus_, ll. 46-54, and
_Odyssey_, x.
PAGE 11. l. 132. _swoon'd serpent. _ Evidently, in the exercise of her
magic, power had gone out of her.
l. 133. _lythe_, quick-acting.
_Caducean charm. _ Caduceus was the name of Hermes' staff of wondrous
powers, the touch of which, evidently, was powerful to give the serpent
human form.
l. 136. _like a moon in wane. _ Cf. the picture of Cynthia, _Endymion_,
iii. 72 sq.
l. 138. _like a flower . . . hour. _ Perhaps a reminiscence of Milton's
'at shut of evening flowers. ' _Paradise Lost_, ix. 278.
PAGE 12. l. 148. _besprent_, sprinkled.
l. 158. _brede_, embroidery. Cf. _Ode on a Grecian Urn_, v. 1.
PAGE 13. l. 178. _rack. _ Cf. _The Tempest_, IV. i. 156, 'leave not a
rack behind. ' _Hyperion_, i. 302, note.
l. 180. This gives us a feeling of weakness and weariness as well as
measuring the distance.
PAGE 14. l. 184. Cf. Wordsworth:
And then my heart with pleasure fills
And dances with the daffodils.
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. 211. Cf. l. 63, note.
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
The two divinest things the world has got--
A lovely woman and a rural spot.
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_:
With music loud and long
I would build that dome in air.
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.
