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Poem by John Keats
Isabella, or the Pot of Basil
(1818) is a narrative poem by
John Keats
adapted from a story in
Boccaccio
's
Decameron
(IV, 5). It tells the tale of a young woman whose family intend to marry her to "some high noble and his olive trees", but who falls for Lorenzo, one of her brothers' employees. When the brothers learn of this, they murder Lorenzo and bury his body. His ghost informs Isabella in a dream. She exhumes the body and buries the head in a pot of
basil
which she tends obsessively, while pining away.
The poem was a precursor to
The Eve of Saint Agnes
. Both are set in the
Middle Ages
and concern passionate and dangerous romances. It was published in 1820 along with the latter work and others.
The poem was popular with
Pre-Raphaelite
painters, who illustrated several episodes from it, notably
Isabella and the Pot of Basil
by
William Holman Hunt
,
Isabella and the Pot of Basil
by
John William Waterhouse
and
Isabella
(also known as
Lorenzo and Isabella
) by
John Everett Millais
. Later,
John White Alexander
depicted the poem in his 1897
Isabella and the Pot of Basil
, currently held at the
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
.
Frank Bridge
also wrote a
symphonic poem
of the same name in 1907.
External links
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edit
]
Wikisource
has original text related to this article:
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