Notes on Isabella.

Metre. The ottava rima of the Italians, the natural outcome of Keats’s turning to Italy for his story. This stanza had been used by Chaucer and the Elizabethans, and recently by Hookham Frere in The Monks and the Giants and by Byron in Don Juan. Compare Keats’s use of the form with that of either of his contemporaries, and notice how he avoids the epigrammatic close, telling in satire and mock-heroic, but inappropriate to a serious and romantic poem.

PAGE 49. l. 2. palmer, pilgrim. As the pilgrim seeks for a shrine where, through the patron saint, he may worship God, so Lorenzo needs a woman to worship, through whom he may worship Love.

PAGE 50. l. 21. constant as her vespers, as often as she said her evening-prayers.

PAGE 51. l. 34. within . . . domain, where it should, naturally, have been rosy.

PAGE 52. l. 46. Fever’d . . . bridge. Made his sense of her worth more passionate.

ll. 51-2. wed To every symbol. Able to read every sign.

PAGE 53. l. 62. fear, make afraid. So used by Shakespeare: e.g. ‘Fear boys with bugs,’ Taming of the Shrew, I. ii. 211.

l. 64. shrive, confess. As the pilgrim cannot be at peace till he has confessed his sins and received absolution, so Lorenzo feels the necessity of confessing his love.

PAGE 54. ll. 81-2. before the dusk . . . veil. A vivid picture of the twilight time, after sunset, but before it is dark enough for the stars to shine brightly.

ll. 83-4. The repetition of the same words helps us to feel the unchanging nature of their devotion and joy in one another.

PAGE 55. l. 91. in fee, in payment for their trouble.

l. 95. Theseus’ spouse. Ariadne, who was deserted by Theseus after having saved his life and left her home for him. Odyssey, xi. 321-5.

l. 99. Dido. Queen of Carthage, whom Aeneas, in his wanderings, wooed and would have married, but the Gods bade him leave her.

silent . . . undergrove. When Aeneas saw Dido in Hades, amongst those who had died for love, he spoke to her pityingly. But she answered him not a word, turning from him into the grove to Lychaeus, her former husband, who comforted her. Vergil, Aeneid, Bk. VI, l. 450 ff.

l. 103. almsmen, receivers of alms, since they take honey from the flowers.

PAGE 56. l. 107. swelt, faint. Cf. Chaucer, Troilus and Cressida, iii. 347.

l. 109. proud-quiver’d, proudly girt with quivers of arrows.

l. 112. rich-ored driftings. The sand of the river in which gold was to be found.

PAGE 57. l. 124. lazar, leper, or any wretched beggar; from the parable of Dives and Lazarus.

stairs, steps on which they sat to beg.

l. 125. red-lin’d accounts, vividly picturing their neat account-books, and at the same time, perhaps, suggesting the human blood for which their accumulation of wealth was responsible.

l. 130. gainful cowardice. A telling expression for the dread of loss which haunts so many wealthy people.

l. 133. hawks . . . forests. As a hawk pounces on its prey, so they fell on the trading-vessels which put into port.

ll. 133-4. the untired . . . lies. They were always ready for any dishonourable transaction by which money might be made.

l. 134. ducats. Italian pieces of money worth about 4s. 4d. Cf. Shylock, Merchant of Venice, II. vii. 15, ‘My ducats.’

l. 135. Quick . . . away. They would undertake to fleece unsuspecting strangers in their town.

PAGE 58. l. 137. ledger-men. As if they only lived in their account-books. Cf. l. 142.

l. 140. Hot Egypt’s pest, the plague of Egypt.

ll. 145-52. As in Lycidas Milton apologizes for the introduction of his attack on the Church, so Keats apologizes for the introduction of this outburst of indignation against cruel and dishonourable dealers, which he feels is unsuited to the tender and pitiful story.

l. 150. ghittern, an instrument like a guitar, strung with wire.

PAGE 59. ll. 153-60. Keats wants to make it clear that he is not trying to surpass Boccaccio, but to give him currency amongst English-speaking people.

l. 159. stead thee, do thee service.

l. 168. olive-trees. In which (through the oil they yield) a great part of the wealth of the Italians lies.

PAGE 60. l. 174. Cut . . . bone. This is not only a vivid way of describing the banishment of all their natural pity. It also, by the metaphor used, gives us a sort of premonitory shudder as at Lorenzo’s death. Indeed, in that moment the murder is, to all intents and purposes, done. In stanza xxvii they are described as riding ‘with their murder’d man’.

PAGE 61. ll. 187-8. ere . . . eglantine. The sun, drying up the dew drop by drop from the sweet-briar is pictured as passing beads along a string, as the Roman Catholics do when they say their prayers.

PAGE 62. l. 209. their . . . man. Cf. l. 174, note. Notice the extraordinary vividness of the picture here--the quiet rural scene and the intrusion of human passion with the reflection in the clear water of the pale murderers, sick with suspense, and the unsuspecting victim, full of glowing life.

l. 212. bream, a kind of fish found in lakes and deep water. Obviously Keats was not an angler.

freshets, little streams of fresh water.

PAGE 63. l. 217. Notice the reticence with which the mere fact of the murder is stated--no details given. Keats wants the prevailing feeling to be one of pity rather than of horror.

ll. 219-20. Ah . . . loneliness. We perpetually come upon this old belief--that the souls of the murdered cannot rest in peace. Cf. Hamlet, I. v. 8, &c.

l. 221. break-covert . . . sin. The blood-hounds employed for tracking down a murderer will find him under any concealment, and never rest till he is found. So restless is the soul of the victim.

l. 222. They . . . water. That water which had reflected the three faces as they went across.

tease, torment.

l. 223. convulsed spur, they spurred their horses violently and uncertainly, scarce knowing what they did.

l. 224. Each richer . . . murderer. This is what they have gained by their deed--the guilt of murder--that is all.

l. 229. stifling: partly literal, since the widow’s weed is close-wrapping and voluminous--partly metaphorical, since the acceptance of fate stifles complaint.

l. 230. accursed bands. So long as a man hopes he is not free, but at the mercy of continual imaginings and fresh disappointments. When hope is laid aside, fear and disappointment go with it.

PAGE 64. l. 241. Selfishness, Love’s cousin. For the two aspects of love, as a selfish and unselfish passion, see Blake’s two poems, Love seeketh only self to please, and, Love seeketh not itself to please.

l. 242. single breast, one-thoughted, being full of love for Lorenzo.

PAGE 65. ll. 249 seq. Cf. Shelley’s Ode to the West Wind.

l. 252. roundelay, a dance in a circle.

l. 259. Striving . . . itself. Her distrust of her brothers is shown in her effort not to betray her fears to them.

dungeon climes. Wherever it is, it is a prison which keeps him from her. Cf. Hamlet, II. ii. 250-4.

l. 262. Hinnom’s Vale, the valley of Moloch’s sacrifices, _Paradise Lost_, i. 392-405.

l. 264. snowy shroud, a truly prophetic dream.

PAGE 66. ll. 267 seq. These comparisons help us to realize her experience as sharp anguish, rousing her from the lethargy of despair, and endowing her for a brief space with almost supernatural energy and willpower.

PAGE 67. l. 286. palsied Druid. The Druids, or priests of ancient Britain, are always pictured as old men with long beards. The conception of such an old man, tremblingly trying to get music from a broken harp, adds to the pathos and mystery of the vision.

l. 288. Like . . . among. Take this line word by word, and see how many different ideas go to create the incomparably ghostly effect.

ll. 289 seq. Horror is skilfully kept from this picture and only tragedy left. The horror is for the eyes of his murderers, not for his love.

l. 292. unthread . . . woof. His narration and explanation of what has gone before is pictured as the disentangling of woven threads.

l. 293. darken’d. In many senses, since their crime was (1) concealed from Isabella, (2) darkly evil, (3) done in the darkness of the wood.

PAGE 68. ll. 305 seq. The whole sound of this stanza is that of a faint and far-away echo.

l. 308. knelling. Every sound is like a death-bell to him.

PAGE 69. l. 316. That paleness. Her paleness showing her great love for him; and, moreover, indicating that they will soon be reunited.

l. 317. bright abyss, the bright hollow of heaven.

l. 322. The atom . . . turmoil. Every one must know the sensation of looking into the darkness, straining one’s eyes, until the darkness itself seems to be composed of moving atoms. The experience with which Keats, in the next lines, compares it, is, we are told, a common experience in the early stages of consumption.

PAGE 70. l. 334. school’d my infancy. She was as a child in her ignorance of evil, and he has taught her the hard lesson that our misery is not always due to the dealings of a blind fate, but sometimes to the deliberate crime and cruelty of those whom we have trusted.

l. 344. forest-hearse. To Isabella the whole forest is but the receptacle of her lover’s corpse.

PAGE 71. l. 347. champaign, country. We can picture Isabel, as they ‘creep’ along, furtively glancing round, and then producing her knife with a smile so terrible that the old nurse can only fear that she is delirious, as her sudden vigour would also suggest.

PAGE 72. st. xlvi-xlviii. These are the stanzas of which Lamb says, ‘there is nothing more awfully simple in diction, more nakedly grand and moving in sentiment, in Dante, in Chaucer, or in Spenser’--and again, after an appreciation of Lamia, whose fairy splendours are ‘for younger impressibilities’, he reverts to them, saying: ‘To us an ounce of feeling is worth a pound of fancy; and therefore we recur again, with a warmer gratitude, to the story of Isabella and the pot of basil, and those never-cloying stanzas which we have cited, and which we think should disarm criticism, if it be not in its nature cruel; if it would not deny to honey its sweetness, nor to roses redness, nor light to the stars in Heaven; if it would not bay the moon out of the skies, rather than acknowledge she is fair.’--The New Times, July 19, 1820.

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.