LI explained

What happens

Themes in this chapter

• Sorrow and Melancholy

  Isabel's constant sighing and weeping over the basil plant reflects deep sorrow and melancholy.

• Love and Loss

  Isabel's care for the basil plant symbolizes her enduring love and loss of Lorenzo.

Characters to notice

• Isabel

  Isabel cares for the basil plant with devotion, combing its leaves and weeping over it.

• Basil

  The basil plant is the object of Isabel's mourning and care.

Key passages

• “In anxious secrecy they took it home, And then the prize was all for Isabel: She calm’d its wild hair with a golden comb, And all around each eye’s sepulchral cell Pointed each fringed lash; the smeared loam With tears, as chilly as a dripping well, She drench’d away: and still she comb’d, and kept Sighing all day⁠—and still she kiss’d and wept.”

  They secretly brought the basil plant home, and Isabel devoted herself to it, combing its leaves and cleaning the soil with her cold tears, sighing and weeping as she kissed it.

  Isabel's ritualistic care for the basil plant underscores her grief and love for Lorenzo.