ll. [363-77]. Note the feeling of fate in the first appearance of Apollonius.
[Page 25]. l. [377]. dreams. Lycius is conscious that it is an illusion even whilst he yields himself up to it.
l. [386]. Aeolian. Aeolus was the god of the winds.
[Page 26]. l. [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.