l. 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.
