Another such criticized 'digression' tells of the toilers yoked in all quarters of the world to the service of these avaricious merchant brothers. In calling up their sufferings Keats for a moment strikes an unexpected verbal echo from the _Annus Mirabilis_ of Dryden.[4] Dryden, telling of the monopolies of the Dutch in the East India trade, had written,-- For them alone the Heav'ns had kindly heat, In eastern quarries ripening precious dew: For them the Idumean balm did sweat, And in hot Ceilon spicy forests grew. Keats writes of Isabella's brothers,-- For them the Ceylon diver held his breath, And went all naked to the hungry shark, For them his ears gush'd blood-- with more in the same strain, very vividly and humanly imagined, but somewhat unevenly written. On the other hand the last of the rests or interruptions in this poem is to my thinking one of its most original and admirable beauties: I mean the invocation beginning 'O Melancholy, linger here awhile,' repeated with lovely modulations in stanzas lv, lvi, and lxi; the poet deliberately pausing to heighten his effect as it were by an accompaniment of words chosen purely for their pathetic melody and more musical than music itself. Keats's way of imagining and telling the story is not less delicate than it is intense. Flaws and false notes there are: phrases, as in _Endymion_, too dulcet and cloying, like that which tells how the lover's lips grew bold, 'And poesied with hers in dewy rhyme:' a flat line where it is most out of place--'And Isabella did not stamp or rave:' a far-fetched rime, as where 'love' and 'grove' draw in after them the alien idea of Lorenzo not being embalmed in 'Indian clove.' But such flaws, abundant in _Endymion_, are in _Isabella_ rare and need to be searched for. If we want an example of the staple tissue of the poem we shall rather find it in a stanza like this:-- Parting they seem'd to tread upon the air, Twin roses by the zephyr blown apart Only to meet again more close, and share The inward fragrance of each other's heart. She, to her chamber gone, a ditty fair Sang of delicious love and honey'd dart; He with light steps went up a western hill, And bade the sun farewell, and joy'd his fill. The image of love-happiness in the last couplet is as jocund and uplifting as some radiant symbolic drawing by Blake, and poetry has few things more perfect or easier in their perfection.