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Stanza 32 Summary

Get out the microscope, because we’re going through this poem line-by-line.

Thus whispering, his warm, unnerved arm
Sank in her pillow. Shaded was her dream
By the dusk curtains:--'twas a midnight charm
Impossible to melt as iced stream:
The lustrous salvers in the moonlight glam;
Broad golden fringe upon the carpet lies:
It seem'd he never, never could redeem
From such a stedfast spell his lady's eyes;
So mus'd awhile, entoil'd in woofed phantasies.

  • Welp, it looks like he's going to have to go with Option Number Two, because Madeline isn't waking up.
  • Porphyro seems well on his way to dream-world—parts of him are already "unnerved," like Madeline.
  • Madeline's swoon, at this point, is being made out to be a kind of adamantium barrier between her and Porphyro, and even as he sinks into her bed, her "dream"—the thing that's protecting her from him—won't "melt."
  • So Porphyro hangs out for a while and muses, getting caught up in his own "phantasies," or waking dreams. 
  • "Woofed" refers to traditional weaving (the warp and the weft are the threads that make up a piece of cloth). This is the second time that Keats has used weaving language to describe the wakeful-dreaming state: when Madeline was going to sleep she was described as "perplex'd," which comes from the Latin word for "woven." Now, both kids are getting "woven" into their respective dream-states.