Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.
'They toil not, neither do they spin.'
- Keats starts the poem off with an epigraph that quotes the Bible.
- This line actually appears in two verses. The first is Luke 12:27: "Consider how the wild flowers grow. They do not labor or spin.
- Yet I tell you, not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these." The second is Matthew 6:28: "And why do you worry about clothes? See how the flowers of the field grow. They do not labor or spin."
- Both lines say roughly the same thing: check out the flowers in the field. They don't stress out about clothes or jobs or anything, and yet they still get to bloom beautifully.