The allegorical meaning of the story seems to be, that it is fatal to attempt to separate the sensuous and emotional life from the life of reason. Philosophy alone is cold and destructive, but the pleasures of the senses alone are unreal and unsatisfying. The man who attempts such a divorce between the two parts of his nature will fail miserably as did Lycius, who, unable permanently to exclude reason, was compelled to face the death of his illusions, and could not, himself, survive them.
Of the poem Keats himself says, writing to his brother in September, 1819: 'I have been reading over a part of a short poem I have composed lately, called _Lamia_, and I am certain there is that sort of fire in it that must take hold of people some way; give them either pleasant or unpleasant sensation--what they want is a sensation of some sort.' But to the greatest of Keats's critics, Charles Lamb, the poem appealed somewhat differently, for he writes, 'More exuberantly rich in imagery and painting [than _Isabella_] is the story of _Lamia_. It is of as gorgeous stuff as ever romance was composed of,' and, after enumerating the most striking pictures in the poem, he adds, '[these] are all that fairy-land can do for us.' _Lamia_ struck his imagination, but his heart was given to _Isabella_.
NOTES ON LAMIA.
PART I.
PAGE 3. ll. 1-6. _before the faery broods . . . lawns_, i.e. before mediaeval fairy-lore had superseded classical mythology.
l. 2. _Satyr_, a horned and goat-legged demi-god of the woods.
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
