Other examples occur in ll. 9, 34, 48, 144.

10 shadowy the use of adjectives ending in ‘-y’ derived from verbs or nouns was encouraged by Hunt’s example. Other instances occur in ll. 26, 50, 139.

11 So elegantly again drawn from Hunt. Allott, p. 37n, quotes W. T. Arnold: ‘Both [Keats and Hunt] have a curious way of using “so”… a sort of appeal to the reader, a tacit question whether he has not noted the same thing, and felt the same pleasure from it’. For other examples, see ll. 16, 130.

12 The six-syllable line here and at ll. 72, 84, 92 probably derives from Spenser’s Epithalamion, a poem much admired by Keats (see To [Mary Frogley] 29–33, 39–40 nn).

14 freaks tricks.

20 float the use of verbs as nouns was supported by Hunt. Further, see 11. 69, 86, 139.

30–45 1817 prints as quatrains.

41 Aye dropping their hard fruit upon the ground Hunt praised the ‘Greek simplicity’ of this line when he reviewed 1817 in the Examiner, reprinted in Critical Heritage, p. 60.

44 window] Tom Keats’s MS, G, Allott; windows 1817.

49 spiral ‘Rising like a spire; tall and tapering or pointed’, used of rocks, buildings, trees, etc. (OED). Steuart’s Planter’s Garden (1828), p. 338, has, ‘It is indispensably necessary… that the standard or grove Trees should be kept spiral.…’

50 cat’s-eyes the speedwell or forget-me-not, or various other small bright flowers. The OED gives this as the earliest example.

56 ken range of vision.

61 undersong a subordinate song or strain, especially one serving as an accompaniment or burden to another: ‘Who the Roundelay should singe / And who againe the vndersong should beare’ (Drayton).

67 shallop dinghy.

73 bright-eyed things fairies.

82 their delicate ankles spanned helped the ladies dismount by placing his hand under the foot, so ‘spanning’ the ankle.

84 affection Allott reads this as four syllables.

87 palfrey ‘a saddle-horse for ordinary riding as distinguished from a warhorse; esp. a small saddle-horse for ladies’ (OED). By the late eighteenth century the word had become a poeticism.

96 cassia probably woodbine (‘Morning Glory’) which is white, rather than honeysuckle. See To George Felton Mathew 43n (p. 563).

119 weed dress (Spenser).

146 brimful a typical word in Keats’s early style.

155 incense the scent of flowers, a poetic usage Keats could have found in Milton, Pope, or Gray, and was to use again, most notably in Ode to a Nightingale 42, ‘soft incense hangs upon the boughs’. See also Endymion I, 470, Hyperion I, 167, The Fall of Hyperion I, 99, 103, and ‘incense-pillowed’, Endymion II, 999. Compare Shelley, Ginevra (1821), 126, ‘The matin winds from the expanded flowers / Scatter their hoarded incense.’

‘TO ONE WHO HAS BEEN LONG IN CITY PENT’

‘Written in the Fields. June 1816’ (Keats-Wylie Scrap-Book). Published 1817. Like O Solitude! if I must with thee dwell, a reaction against being bound down in London by his medical studies, though as Bate (1963), pp. 63–4, suggests, it is also an attempt to write another version of his first published poem. The sonnet starts from an adaptation of Milton’s ‘As one who long in populous City pent’ (Paradise Lost IX, 445). Also echoes Coleridge, ‘How many bards in city garret pent’ (To the Nightingale [1796], 2).

7 debonair gentle, gracious (Spenser).

7–8 probably another reference to Hunt’s The Story of Rimini.

‘O! HOW I LOVE, ON A FAIR SUMMER’S EVE’

Written summer 1816, probably June-July.