l. [297]. Into another, i.e. into the trance of passion from which he only wakes to die.
[Page 21]. l. [320]. Adonian feast. Adonis was a beautiful youth beloved of Venus. He was killed by a wild boar when hunting, and Venus then had him borne to Elysium, where he sleeps pillowed on flowers. Cf. Endymion, ii. 387.
[Page 22]. l. [329]. Peris, in Persian story fairies, descended from the fallen angels.
ll. [330-2]. The vulgarity of these lines we may attribute partly to the influence of Leigh Hunt, who himself wrote of
The two divinest things the world has got—
A lovely woman and a rural spot.
It was an influence which Keats, with the development of his own character and genius, was rapidly outgrowing.
l. [333]. Pyrrha's pebbles. There is a legend that, after the flood, Deucalion and Pyrrha cast stones behind them which became men, thus re-peopling the world.
[Page 23]. ll. [350-4]. Keats brings the very atmosphere of a dream about us in these lines, and makes us hear the murmur of the city as something remote from the chief actors.
l. [352]. lewd, ignorant. The original meaning of the word which came later to mean dissolute.
[Page 24]. l. [360]. corniced shade. Cf. Eve of St. Agnes, [ix], 'Buttress'd from moonlight.'
