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 lawns, i.e. before mediaeval fairy-lore had superseded classical mythology.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 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.