‘And she forgot’, suggest Isabella’s excessive passion with Lorenzo’s head, which is buried in the pot of basil. The basil pot does not only remember the loss of Lorenzo but it is also remembered for what Isabella has done. It hypostatizes beauty and truth, ignorance and knowledge, sweetness and bitterness. It is Isabella's Grecian urn and the basil plant represents in its richness the totality of her solitude. But her brothers watch as unsympathetically upon their employees as they do upon the lovers. They are the symbol of a selfish and envious state of mind. After the murder, they observe Isabella suspiciously as she spends her days watering the basil plant with her tears: Greatly they wondered what the thing might mean:
They could not surely give belief, that such
A very nothing would have power to wean
Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,
And even remembrance of her love's …show more content…
There are two central symbols: first, when Isabella finds her way through the forest and digs up Lorenzo’s body and the second, the pot of basil. The pot is just like the Grecian urn to keep the remains of the dead. Both Pot and urn are valuable vessels that carry mysterious stories of the past and restore life. Like the urn, Isabella also bears a story of sentiment, but succeeds it and feels happy and "still to be enjoyed" (Lagory, 1995, p. 341). For Keats the poet's eye penetrates to the wealth life which often keeps in a hidden way. Thus the pot of basil a symbol of containers that produces new life from remains of the past: wombs, eggs, and the earth that nourishes seeds. But a circumstance creates a song which spreads sympathy after the basil pot is broken: "a sad ditty of this story born / From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd: / Still is the burden sung ..." (501-3). Like the basil plant, art, which is nourished by sympathy, and which trains us in sympathy, grows out of tragic
They could not surely give belief, that such
A very nothing would have power to wean
Her from her own fair youth, and pleasures gay,
And even remembrance of her love's …show more content…
There are two central symbols: first, when Isabella finds her way through the forest and digs up Lorenzo’s body and the second, the pot of basil. The pot is just like the Grecian urn to keep the remains of the dead. Both Pot and urn are valuable vessels that carry mysterious stories of the past and restore life. Like the urn, Isabella also bears a story of sentiment, but succeeds it and feels happy and "still to be enjoyed" (Lagory, 1995, p. 341). For Keats the poet's eye penetrates to the wealth life which often keeps in a hidden way. Thus the pot of basil a symbol of containers that produces new life from remains of the past: wombs, eggs, and the earth that nourishes seeds. But a circumstance creates a song which spreads sympathy after the basil pot is broken: "a sad ditty of this story born / From mouth to mouth through all the country pass'd: / Still is the burden sung ..." (501-3). Like the basil plant, art, which is nourished by sympathy, and which trains us in sympathy, grows out of tragic