PAGE 96. l. 226. _Vespers._ Cf. _Isabella_, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See Introduction, p. 213.
l. 237. _poppied_, because of the sleep-giving property of the poppy-heads.
l. 241. _Clasp'd . . . pray._ The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.
_missal_, prayer-book.
PAGE 97. l. 247. _To wake . . . tenderness._ He waited to hear, by the sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.
l. 250. _Noiseless . . . wilderness._ We picture a man creeping over a wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast or other frightful thing.
l. 257. _Morphean._ Morpheus was the god of sleep.
_amulet_, charm.
l. 258. _boisterous . . . festive._ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.
l. 261. _and . . . gone._ The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted to express a dying-away of sound.
PAGE 98. l. 266. _soother_, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use of the word. Sooth really means truth.
l. 267. _tinct_, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.
l. 268. _argosy_, merchant-ship. Cf. _Merchant of Venice_, I. i. 9, 'Your argosies with portly sail.'
PAGE 99. l. 287. Before he desired a 'Morphean amulet'; now he wishes to release his lady's eyes from the charm of sleep.
l. 288. _woofed phantasies._ Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf. _Isabella_, l. 292.
l. 292. '_La belle . . . mercy._' This stirred Keats's imagination, and he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).
l. 296. _affrayed_, frightened. Cf. l. 198.
PAGE 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne's poem, _The Dream_:--
My dream thou brokest not, but continued'st it.
l. 300. _painful change_, his paleness.
l. 311. _pallid, chill, and drear._ Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.
PAGE 101. l. 323. _Love's alarum_, warning them to speed away.
l. 325. _flaw_, gust of wind. Cf. _Coriolanus_, V. iii. 74; _Hamlet_, V. i. 239.
l. 333. _unpruned_, not trimmed.
PAGE 102. l. 343. _elfin-storm._ The beldame has suggested that he must be 'liege-lord of all the elves and fays'.
l. 351. _o'er . . . moors._ A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.
PAGE 103. l. 355. _darkling._ Cf. _King Lear_, I. iv. 237: 'So out went the candle and we were left darkling.' Cf. _Ode to a Nightingale_, l. 51.
l. 360. _And . . . floor._ There is the very sound of the wind in this line.
PAGE 104. ll. 375-8. _Angela . . . cold._ The death of these two leaves us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy; whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor, and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.
INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.
These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together, they seem to sum up Keats's philosophy.
In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast; in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.
The first-written of the four, the _Ode to a Nightingale_, is the most passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and himself nursed to the end. He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world 'where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies', and the song of the nightingale, heard in a friend's garden at Hampstead, made him long to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the
