Misers

Contrary to any stereotypes you may have heard, frugal people aren’t gaunt, gloomy misers with threadbare clothes and an air of permanent sadness.

The job of the MISers consisted of trying to talk both the Japanese soldiers and the Okinawan civilians into surrendering.

It is not until the next stanza that Isabella herself actually begins digging (“with a knife … more fervently than misers can”), but by then Keats has already taken us by the hand deep into the “clayey soil and gravel hard” of Lorenzo’s grave.