supernatural energy and
willpower.

PAGE 67. l. 286. _palsied Druid._ The Druids, or priests of ancient
Britain, are always pictured as old men with long beards. The conception
of such an old man, tremblingly trying to get music from a broken harp,
adds to the pathos and mystery of the vision.

l. 288. _Like . . . among._ Take this line word by word, and see how
many different ideas go to create the incomparably ghostly effect.

ll. 289 seq. Horror is skilfully kept from this picture and only tragedy
left. The horror is for the eyes of his murderers, not for his love.

l. 292. _unthread . . . woof._ His narration and explanation of what has
gone before is pictured as the disentangling of woven threads.

l. 293. _darken'd._ In many senses, since their crime was (1) concealed
from Isabella, (2) darkly evil, (3) done in the darkness of the wood.

PAGE 68. ll. 305 seq. The whole sound of this stanza is that of a faint
and far-away echo.

l. 308. _knelling._ Every sound is like a death-bell to him.

PAGE 69. l. 316. _That paleness._ Her paleness showing her great love
for him; and, moreover, indicating that they will soon be reunited.

l. 317. _bright abyss_, the bright hollow of heaven.

l. 322. _The atom . . . turmoil._ Every one must know the sensation of
looking into the darkness, straining one's eyes, until the darkness
itself seems to be composed of moving atoms. The experience with which
Keats, in the next lines, compares it, is, we are told, a common
experience in the early stages of consumption.

PAGE 70. l. 334. _school'd my infancy._ She was as a child in her
ignorance of evil, and he has taught her the hard lesson that our misery
is not always due to the dealings of a blind fate, but sometimes to the
deliberate crime and cruelty of those whom we have trusted.

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