NOTES KEATS ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE P. 120, 1. 16. Hippocrene: A spring, sacred to the Muses, on Mount Helicon in Boeotia. ODE TO PSYCHE "The following poem, the last I have written, is the first and only one with which I have taken even moderate pains. I have, for the most part, dashed off my lines in a hurry; this one I have done leisurely; I think it reads the more richly for it, and it will, I hope, encourage me to write other things in even a more peaceful and healthy spirit."- KEATS, to his brother George. P. 126, 1. 9. two fair creatures: Read the myth of Cupid and Psyche. P. 127, 1. 30. delicious moan: Compare The Eve of St. Agnes, vii., 2. To AUTUMN "I never liked stubble-fields so much as now aye, better than the chilly green of spring. Somehow a stubble-plain looks warm, in the same way that some pictures look warm. This struck me so much in my Sunday's walk that I composed upon it." KEATS to Reynolds. P. 129, 1. 14. Thee sitting: Read Gray's ode On the Spring, then Collins's Passions. Compare the two poems with Keats's in the use of personification. ODE ON MELANCHOLY P. 131, 1. 26. sovran shrine :· "The very source and fount of Day Is dashed with wandering isles of night." P. 133, 1. 46. sticks and straw: Note the onomatopoeia; compare: "The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed." P. 135, 1. 81. Ceres' daughter: Compare Milton's description: Proserpin gathering flowers, Herself a fairer flower, by gloomy Dis Was gathered - which cost Ceres all that pain To seek her through the world." - Paradise Lost, IV., 269–272. ON FIRST LOOKING INTO CHAPMAN'S HOMER Charles Cowden Clarke and Keats had read Chapman far into the night. Early the next morning the sonnet was handed to Clarke. It was written in 1816 and is considered the best of Keats's early work. P. 140, 1. 8. Chapman: 1557-1634. He was, therefore, a contemporary of Shakespeare's. He wrote poetry and dramas, but is best known by his translation of Homer. 1. 11. Cortez: It should be Balboa, but the beauty of the poem is not marred by the error. SONNET TO HOMER P. 143, 1. 1. giant ignorance: an allusion to Keats's ignorance of the Greek language. 1. 11. a budding morrow: "It will be of interest to many lovers both of Keats and Rossetti [D. G.] to learn that the latter poet, whom we have but lately lost, considered this sonnet to contain Keats's finest single line of poetry 'There is a budding morrow in midnight,' a line which Rossetti told me he thought one of the finest 'in all poetry.'" -FORMAN. Compare the verse with stanza iii. Ode on Melancholy. I STOOD TIP-TOE UPON A LITTLE HILL "Mr. Keats is seen to his best advantage [in this poem], and displays all that fertile power of association and imagery which constitutes the abstract poetical faculty as distinguished from every other."-LEIGH HUNT. P. 146, 1. 18. its brim: Note the point of view. P. 147, 1. 22. jaunty: meaning? 1. 29. bees about them: cf. Ode to a Nightingale, stanza v.; also To Autumn, stanza i. = 1. 38. frequent chequer frequent checker; shadows alternating with patches of sunshine. P. 149, 1. 73. wavy bodies: "A shoal Of devious minnows wheel from where a pike P. 152, 1. 162. Narcissus: Because of his insensibility to love he was made to worship his own image in the water. He was finally changed to the flower which bears his name. Echo, whose love for him was not returned, died of grief. ISABELLA; OR, THE POT OF BASIL. The story is told by Boccaccio, Decamerone, Giorn. IV., Nov. 5. "The following masterly an P. 166, 1. 209. murdered man : ticipation of his end, conveyed in a single word, has been justly admired."-LEIGH HUNT. P. 169, 1. 262. Hinnom's vale: the valley of Hinnom where Moloch was worshipped. Compare Milton's description in Paradise Lost, I., 392-405, also Moloch's speech, II., 51–105. P. 175, 1. 393. Persèan sword: the sword with which Perseus slew Medusa, one of the three gorgons. P. 178, 1. 442. Melpomene: the muse of tragedy. 1. 451. Baälites of pelf: those who worship money as the pagans worship Baal. P. 180, 1. 493. the Pilgrim: This does not refer to Lorenzo. THE EVE OF ST. AGNES "St. Agnes was a Roman virgin, who suffered martyrdom in the reign of Diocletian. Her parents, a few days after her decease, are said to have had a vision of her, surrounded by angels, and attended by a white lamb which afterward became sacred to her. In the Catholic Church, formerly, the nuns used to bring a couple of lambs to her altar during Mass. The superstition is that by taking certain measures of divination, damsels may get a sight of their future husbands in a dream. The ordinary process seems to have been by fasting." -LEIGH HUNT. St. Agnes's Day is January 21; St. Agnes's Eve, January 20. P. 183, 1. 31. snarling trumpets: Does the adjective denote a quality of the sound, or is it, from Porphyro's point of view, descriptive of the situation? P. 188, l. 120. witch's sieve: Compare Macbeth, I., iii., 8. P. 190, l. 171. Merlin paid his Demon: "The monstrous debt was his monstrous existence which he owed to a demon and |