t it, at this moment, through the
eyes of the chief actors in his drama, and feeling with them.

PAGE 43. l. 263. Notice the horror of the deadly hush and the sudden
fading of the flowers.

l. 266. _step by step_, prepares us for the thought of the silence as a
horrid presence.

ll. 274-5. _to illume the deep-recessed vision._ We at once see her dull
and sunken eyes.

PAGE 45. l. 301. _perceant_, piercing--a Spenserian word.

INTRODUCTION TO ISABELLA AND THE EVE OF ST. AGNES

In _Lamia_ and _Hyperion_, as in _Endymion_, we find Keats inspired by
classic story, though the inspiration in each case came to him through
Elizabethan writers. Here, on the other hand, mediaeval legend is his
inspiration; the 'faery broods' have driven 'nymph and satyr from the
prosperous woods'. Akin to the Greeks as he was in spirit, in his
instinctive personification of the lovely manifestations of nature, his
style and method were really more naturally suited to the portrayal of
mediaeval scenes, where he found the richness and warmth of colour in
which his soul delighted.

The story of _Isabella_ he took from Boccaccio, an Italian writer of the
fourteenth century, whose _Decameron_, a collection of one hundred
stories, has been a store-house of plots for English writers. By
Boccaccio the tale is very shortly and simply told, being evidently
interesting to him mainly for its plot. Keats was attracted to it not so
much by the action as by the passion involved, so that his enlargement
of it means little elaboration of incident, but very much more dwelling
on the psychological aspect. That is to say, he does not care so much
what happens, as what the personages of the poem think and feel.

Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo,
is passed over in a line--'Thus was Lorenzo slain and buried in,' the
next line, 'There, in that forest, did his great love cease,' bringing
us back at once from the physical reality of the murder to the thought
of his love, which is to Keats the central fact of the story.

In the delineation of Isabella, her first tender passion of love, her
agony of apprehension giving way to dull despair, her sudden wakening to
a brief period of frenzied action, described in stanzas of incomparable
dramatic force, and the 'peace' which followed when she

Forgot the stars, the moon, the sun,
And she forgot the blue above the trees,
And she forgot the dells where waters run,