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 . . . phantasies, i.e. which she had embroidered fancifully for him.
[Page 73]. l. [385]. wormy circumstance, ghastly detail. Keats envies the un-self-conscious simplicity of the old ballad-writers in treating such a theme as this, and bids the reader turn to Boccaccio, whose description of the scene he cannot hope to rival. Boccaccio writes: 'Nor had she dug long before she found the body of her hapless lover, whereon as yet there was no trace of corruption or decay; and thus she saw without any manner of doubt that her vision was true. And so, saddest of women, knowing that she might not bewail him there, she would gladly, if she could, have carried away the body and given it more honourable sepulture elsewhere; but as she might not do so, she took a knife, and, as best she could, severed the head from the trunk, and wrapped it in a napkin and laid it in the lap of the maid; and having covered the rest of the corpse with earth, she left the spot, having been seen by none, and went home.'
[Page 74]. l. [393]. Perséan sword. The sword of sharpness given to Perseus by Hermes, with which he cut off the head of the Gorgon Medusa, a monster with the head of a woman, and snaky locks, the sight of whom turned those who looked on her into stone. Perseus escaped by looking only at her reflection in his shield.
l. [406]. chilly: tears, not passionate, but of cold despair.
[Page 75]. l. [410]. pluck'd in Araby. Cf. Lady Macbeth, 'All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand,' Macbeth, v. ii. 55.
l. [412]. serpent-pipe, twisted pipe.