No More Learning

8. _without a death. _ The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of
the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul.

PAGE 84. l. 12. _meagre, barefoot, wan. _ Such a compression of a
description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He
shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and
their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an
extraordinary force.

l. 15. _purgatorial rails_, rails which enclose them in a place of
torture.

l. 16. _dumb orat'ries.
_ The transference of the adjective from person
to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate
things. Cf. _Hyperion_, iii. 8; _Ode to a Nightingale_, l. 66.

l. 22. _already . . . rung. _ He was dead to the world. But this hint
should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem.

PAGE 85. l. 31.