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.
'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.
Keats
_ 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 .
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 .
