Isabella Flashcards
1
Q
How is their love described before it’s revealed?
A
- sick longing … to hear her morning step upon the stair
- love grew tenderer with every eve deeper and tenderer still
- beneath the same roof sleep but to each other dream and nightly weep
- This sad plight made their cheeks paler by the break of June
- honeyless days and days
2
Q
How is their love described after it’s revealed?
A
- even bees know … there is richest juice in poison flowers
- were they unhappy then? - it cannot be
- share the inward fragrance of each other’s heart
- little sweet doth kill much bitterness
3
Q
How is the setting described?
A
- from wintry cold to summer clime
- taste the blossoms + ripe warmth
- great happiness grew like a lusty flower in June’s caress
- before the dusk had taken from the stars its pleasant veil
- free from whispering tale
4
Q
How is Isabella described in the beginning?
A
- Fair Isabel, poor simple Isabel
- Sweet Isabella’s untouched cheek fell sick within the rose’s just domain
- her lute string gave an echo of his name
- she saw it waxing very pale and dead and straight all flushed
- fell thin as a young mother’s who doth seek by every lull to cool her infant’s pain
- sang of delicious love and honeyed dart
5
Q
How is Lorenzo described in the beginning?
A
- Lorenzo, a young palmer in love’s eye
- would catch her beauty farther than the falcon spies
- brought him to the meekness of a child. Alas when passion is both meek and wild
- his heart beat awfully against his side
- once more he had wakened and anguished a dreary night of love and misery
- timid lips grew bold
6
Q
How are the brothers described?
A
- Why were they proud? Again we ask aloud why in the name of Glory were they proud?
- gainful cowardice + hungry pride
- ledger men + money bags
- spy fair Isabella in her drowsy nest
- covetous and sly
- must see behind, as doth the hunted hare
7
Q
How are the workers described?
A
- A thousand men in troubles wide and dark: half ignorant they turned an easy wheel, they set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel
- torched mines and noisy factories
- blood from a stinging whip + hollow eyes
- dazzling river stood to take the rich ored driftings of the flood
8
Q
How do the brother’s plan to murder Lorenzo?
A
- these men of cruel clay cut Mercy with a sharp knife to the bone
- sick and wan the brothers face
- into a forest quiet for the slaughter
- there in that forest did his great love cease
- murderous spite of pride and avarice
- make the youngster for his crime atone
9
Q
How is Lorenzo described before his death?
A
- On a pleasant morning as he leant into the sunrise
- light whisper of her footstep soft and as he thus over his passion hung
- heard a laugh full musical aloft + saw her features bright
- I am to stifle the heavy sorrow of a poor three hours absence?
- their murdered man
- soul doth thus its freedom win, it aches in loneliness is ill at peace
- Lorenzo’s flush with love
10
Q
How does Isabella react to Lorenzo’s disappearance?
A
- weeps alone for pleasure not to be
- To the silence made a gentle moan spreading her perfect arms upon the air and on her couch low murmuring where oh where
- Selfishness, Love’s cousin, held not long its fiery vigil in her single breast
- richer zest came tragic a passion not to be subdued and sorrow for her love in travels rude
- breath of winter comes from far away and the sick west continually bereaves
- sweet Isabel by gradual decay from beauty fell
- died in drowsy ignorance
11
Q
How is the brother’s guilt shown? How do they describe the basil pot?
A
- every night in dreams they groaned aloud to see their sister in her snowy shroud
- away they went, with blood upon their heads, to banishment
- thing was vile with green and livid spot
12
Q
How is the truth revealed to Isabella and how is the phantom described?
A
- it was a vision in the drowsy gloom, the dull of midnight
- Strange sound it was when the pale shadow spake in its piteous tongue.
- Isabella on its music hung. Languor there was in it and tremulous shake.
- moaned a ghostly under song
- Those sounds grow strange to me, thou art distant in humanity
- forget the tastes of earthly bliss
- its eyes though wild, were still all dewy bright with love
- dissolved and left the atom darkness in a slow turmoil
13
Q
How is the setting of Lorenzo’s love described?
A
- red whortleberries droop above my head and a large flint stone weighs upon my feet
- shed their leaves + prickly nuts
- a sheep-fold bleat came from beyond the river
- dismal forest hearse
14
Q
How does Isabella react to the phantom?
A
- made sad Isabella’s eyelids ache
- but there is crime a brother’s bloody knife. Sweet spirit thou hast schooled my infancy
- What feverous hectic flame burns in thee child?
- sing to it one latest lullaby
15
Q
What occurs at Lorenzo’s grave sight?
A
- Upon the murderous spot she seemed to grow like a native lily of the dell
- she turned up a soiled glove, whereon her silk had played in purple phantasies. She kissed it with a lip more chill than stone.
- throw back at times her veiling hair
- until her heart felt pity to the core at sight of such a dismal labouring … and put her lean hands to the horrid thing
- taste the music of that vision pale
- If love impersonate was ever dead, pale Isabella kissed it and low moaned. Twas love, cold dead indeed but not dethroned.
- They cut off no formless monster’s head but one who’s gentleness did well accord with death as life
16
Q
How does Isabella’s grief intensify?
A
- anxious secrecy they took it home
- calmed its wild hair with a golden comb
- and still she combed and kept sighing all day and still she kissed and wept
- sweet basil which her tears kept ever wet
- and she forgot the stars, the moon and sun and she forgot the blue above the trees
- ever fed it with thin tears whence thick and green and beautiful it grew so that it smelt more balmy than its peers
- sat drooping by the basil green, and why it flourished,
as by magic touch - jewel safely casketed
- she hurried back as swift as bird on wing to breast its eggs again + patient as a hen bird
17
Q
How is Isabella’s death foreshadowed?
A
- make a pale light in your cypress glooms, tinting with silver wan your marble tombs
- moan hither all ye syllables of woe
- Simple Isabel is soon to be among the dead. She withers like a palm cut by an Indian for its juicy balm
- for Isabel sweet Isabel will die, will die a death too lone and incomplete now they have tak’n away her basil sweet
- piteous she looked on dead and senseless things
- youth and beauty should be thrown aside + dead eyes
18
Q
How does the poem end?
A
- And so she pined and so she died forlorn imploring for her basil to the last
- did mourn in pity for her love so overcast
- sad ditty of this story born from mouth to mouth through all the country passed
