If Lycius had lived longer his
experience
might have
either contradicted or corroborated this saying.
Keats
394. _flitter-winged._ Imagining the poem winging its way
along like a bird. _Flitter_, cf. flittermouse = bat.
PART II.
PAGE 27. ll. 1-9. Again a passage unworthy of Keats's genius. Perhaps
the attempt to be light, like his seventeenth-century model, Dryden, led
him for the moment to adopt something of the cynicism of that age about
love.
ll. 7-9. i.e.
If Lycius had lived longer his
experience
might have
either contradicted or corroborated this saying.
PAGE 28. l. 27. _Deafening_, in the unusual sense of making inaudible.
ll. 27-8. _came a thrill Of trumpets._ From the first moment that the
outside world makes its claim felt there is no happiness for the man
who, like Lycius, is living a life of selfish pleasure.
PAGE 29. l. 39. _passing bell._ Either the bell rung for a condemned man
the night before his execution, or the bell rung when a man was dying
that men might pray for the departing soul.
