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_. PAGE 83. ll. 5-6. _told His rosary._ Cf. _Isabella_, ll. 87-8. l. 8. _without a death._ The 'flight to heaven' obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul. PAGE 84. l. 12. _meagre, barefoot, wan._ Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats's poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an extraordinary force. l. 15. _purgatorial rails_, rails which enclose them in a place of torture. l. 16. _dumb orat'ries._ The transference of the adjective from person to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate things. Cf. _Hyperion_, iii. 8; _Ode to a Nightingale_, l. 66. l. 22. _already . . . rung._ He was dead to the world. But this hint should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem. PAGE 85. l. 31. _'gan to chide._ l. 32. _ready with their pride._ l. 34. _ever eager-eyed._ l. 36. _with hair . . . breasts._ As if trumpets, rooms, and carved angels were all alive. See Introduction, p. 212. l. 37. _argent_, silver. They were all glittering with rich robes and arms. PAGE 86. l. 56. _yearning . . . pain_, expressing all the exquisite beauty and pathos of the music; and moreover seeming to give it conscious life. PAGE 87. l. 64. _danc'd_, conveying all her restlessness and impatience as well as the lightness of her step. l. 70. _amort_, deadened, dull. Cf. _Taming of the Shrew_, IV. iii. 36, 'What sweeting! all amort.' l. 71. See note on St. Agnes, p. 224. l. 77. _Buttress'd from moonlight._ A picture of the castle and of the night, as well as of Porphyro's position.