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 circumstance_, 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. _Perséan 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 shield.
l. 406. _chilly_: tears, not passionate, 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 repetition 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. _Baälites of pelf_, worshippers 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. xxxv. 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.
