[Page 79]. l. [475]. vile . . . spot. The one touch of descriptive horror—powerful in its reticence.
[Page 80]. l. [489]. on . . . things. Her love and her hope is with the dead rather than with the living.
l. [492]. lorn voice. Cf. st. [xxxv]. She is approaching her lover. Note that in each case the metaphor is of a stringed instrument.
l. [493]. Pilgrim in his wanderings. Cf. st. i, 'a young palmer in Love's eye.'
l. [503]. burthen, refrain. Cf. Tempest, i. ii. Ariel's songs.
NOTES ON THE EVE OF ST. AGNES.
See Introduction to Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes, p. [212].
St. Agnes was a martyr of the Christian Church who was beheaded just outside Rome in 304 because she refused to marry a Pagan, holding herself to be a bride of Christ. She was only 13—so small and slender that the smallest fetters they could find slipped over her little wrists and fell to the ground. But they stripped, tortured, and killed her. A week after her death her parents dreamed that they saw her in glory with a white lamb, the sign of purity, beside her. Hence she is always pictured with lambs (as her name signifies), and to the place of her martyrdom two lambs are yearly taken on the anniversary and blessed. Then their wool is cut off and woven by the nuns into the archbishop's cloak, or pallium (see l. [70]).
For the legend connected with the Eve of the Saint's anniversary, to which Keats refers, see st. [vi].
Metre. That of the Faerie Queene.