The Eve of St Agnes
Warning of Danger / Tragic Outcome Conflict / Violence
“all the bliss to be before to-morrow “The silver, snarling trumpets ‘gan to
mourn” chide” - this is menacing music, not a
“else stones will be thy bier” (Angela) gentle melody.
“I deem Thou canst not surely be the “or a hundred swords Will storm his
same that thou didst seem.” (Angela) heart, Love’s fev’rous citadel” -
“in a little moonlight room, Pale, latticed, Porphyro's heart may be a "fev'rous
chill, and silent as a tomb” - a place that citadel," a metaphorical city burning
has more in common with the with lovesickness—but that city might
Beadsman's icy chapel than the warmth easily be overthrown by "a hundred
of the party below. swords," a metonym for the dangerous
“Never on such a night have lovers met, party guests. Readers might also think
Since Merlin paid his Demon all the back to all those cold tombs in the first
monstrous debt.” – an allusion to the stanzas, a warning that death is all
episode of Arthurian legend in which around the young lovers.
Merlin falls in love with the sorceress “For him those chambers held barbarian
Vivien—only for her to steal his powers hordes, Hyena foremen, and hot-blooded
and imprison him in a cave. lords, Whose very dogs would
“Or may I never leave my grave among execrations howl Against his lineage” –
the dead.” Romeo and Juliet, ancient conflict
“Upon his knees he sank, pale as between families.
smooth-sculptured stone” – reminder of “the whole blood-thirsty race” (Angela)
their mortality “else stones will be thy bier” (Angela)
“How changed thou art! How pallid, chill, “Yet men will murder upon holy days”
and drear!” – his mortality, in reality (Angela)
they cannot live in eternal bliss. “She hurried at his words, beset with
“Meantime the frost-wind blows Like fears, For there were sleeping dragons
Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet all around. At glaring watch, perhaps,
Against the window-panes” - storm is with ready spears”
used as a symbol of harsh, chilly reality. “The arras, rich with horseman, hawk,
“the icèd gusts still rave and beat.” and hound, Fluttered in the besieging
“Let us away, my love, with happy wind’s uproar” - The poem evokes the
speed” – attempting to avoid a tragic tense, trembling darkness and silence of
ending, which is perhaps inevitable. the midnight house through rich
“They glide, like phantoms, into the wide imagery and alliteration. The /h/
hall; Like phantoms, to the iron porch, sound that repeats through these lines is
they glide” – simile; both literally are like the low gusts of wind that wander
phantoms: both spirits from a ghostly through the drafty castle, making the
and distant past, and inventions, mere carpets ripple and the "arras" (or
"shadows” like the party guests. As the tapestry) flutter.
poem comes to its close, it leaves its “the Baron dreamt of many a woe”
intense sensory immersion in Madeline “all his warrior-guests, with shade and
and Porphyro's experience and starts to form Of witch, and demon, and large
see them as what they are: fleeting coffin-worm, Were long be-nightmared.”
dreams. – visions of horror
“The chains lie silent on the footworn
stones … the door upon its hinges
groans.” – present tense, at once the
reader senses both fantasy and reality.
The Cold Outside / The Beadsman Spying / Watching / Hiding
“bitter chill” “The carvèd angels, ever eager-eyed”
“The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold” “where he stood, hid from the torch’s
,“The hare limped trembling through the flame, Behind a broad hall-pillar”
frozen grass” “in close secrecy, Even to Madeline’s
“silent was the flock in woolly fold” - the chamber, and there hide Him in a closet,
poem immerses its reader in this of such privacy That he might see her
romantic world with rich sensory beauty unespied”
imagery. “Madeline, St Agnes’ charmèd maid,
“Numb were the Beadsman’s fingers” Rose, like a missioned spirit, unaware” –
“this patient, holy man” figure of holy beauty.
“meagre, barefoot, wan” “Out went the taper…Its little smoke, in
“The sculptured dead, on each side, pallid moonshine, died” (“silver taper’s
seem to freeze” – gothic imagery – light”)
allusion to Romeo and Juliet; imagery of “But dares not look behind, or all the
this Gothic chapel, with its generations charm is fled.”
of noble corpses – at the end the two “so entranced, Porphyro gazed upon her
young lovers die in the Capulet family empty dress”
tomb. “from the closet crept, Noiseless as fear
“Emprisoned in black, purgatorial rails” in a wide wildernesss, And over the
“They may ache in icy hoods and mails” hush'd carpet, silent, stept” – the
“agèd man and poor” hushed sibilance creates a mood of
“already his death bell rung” tense quiet as Porphyro emerges.
“among Rough ashes sat he for his Porphyro is trying so hard to be quiet
soul’s reprieve, And all night kept awake, that Madeline's comfortable bedroom
for sinnners’ sake to grieve” suddenly feels like a "wild wilderness" to
“ancient Beadsman” him—and he himself becomes, not just a
“The Beadsman, after thousand aves frightened person, but a
told, For aye unsought for slept among personification of fear itself.
his ashes cold.” - The speaker lingers on “Though thou forsakest a deceievèd
the nastiness of their deaths with grim thing – A dove forlorn and lost with sick
relish. unprunèd wing.” (Madeline) - she
predicts feeling even more lost when he
leaves her: she'll be like a dove with a
broken wing.
“There are no ears to hear, or eyes to
see, Drowned all in Rhenish and the
sleepy mead”
Angela
“one old beldame, weak in body and in soul” - allusion to Romeo and Juliet. As a
foolish old woman who helps to bring the young lovers together, Angela plays
exactly the same role here as Juliet's nurse.
“the agèd creature”
“soon she knew his face”
“her palsied hand”
“Feebly she laugheth in languid moon”
“Like puzzled urchin on an agèd crone Who keepeth closed a wondrous riddle-book”
– simile – Porphyro is young and earnest, and Angela is old and cynical. This
moment thus provides some surprising comic relief.
“A cruel man and impious thou art: Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream
Alone with her good angels, far apart From wicked men like thee.”
“I deem Thou canst not surely be the same that thou did seem.” (Angela)
“a feeble soul … A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing, Whose passing-bell
may ere midnight till; Whose prayers for thee, each morn and evening, Were never
missed.” (Angela)
“I am slow and feeble”
“Or may I never leave my grave among the dead.”
, “with busy fear”
“with agèd eyes aghast From fright of dim espial”
“with agues in her brain”
“Her faltering hand upon the balustrade, Old Angela was feeling for the stair”
“Angela the old Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform” - The speaker
lingers on the nastiness of their deaths with grim relish.
Ritual of St Agnes
“couch supine their beauties, lily white” – Keats’ theory of "Negative Capability."
Madeline's St. Agnes's Eve ritual asks her to behave like a poet. Her job isn't to sit
down and try to imagine her lover, but to make herself an empty vessel and wait
for a vision to fill her. The rewards will be a sensuous imaginative experience
beyond anything she could have tried to invent – the lily connoted death.
“Save to St Agnes and her lambs unshorn” - the lamb, the picture of sweet
innocence – there is something pure and holy about physical love.
“none but sacred sisterhood may see, When they St Agnes’ wool are weaving
piously” - Weaving is an ancient metaphor for storytelling and for dreaming, which
"weave" bits and pieces of real-world experience together into something
fantastical and new. The dream Madeline wishes for, and this very poem, are both
"weavings" of this kind. And again, the poem insists that storytelling and sexy
dreaming are "pious[]," pure and holy activities rather than degraded ones – also
shows Porphyro’s awareness that he should not see Madeline.
“my lady fair the conjuror plays This very night.”
“Tears, at the thought of those enchantments cold, And Madeline asleep in lap of
legends old.” – enjambment, tearing/choking up.
“While legioned faeries paced the coverlet, And pale enchantment held her sleepy-
eyed” – figurative language and allusion: allusion to Romeo and Juliet when he
imagines that herds of fairies will walk over Madeline's bedclothes as she sleeps.
That image is straight out of the famous Queen Mab speech, in which the
flamboyant Mercutio imagines the Queen of the Fairies riding her chariot over the
covers to bring sleepers powerful and fearful dreams. Also, allusions to moments
of deep enchantment, certainly, but also to moments of real danger. Even the
personification of "pale enchantment" here is ambiguous: as enchantment
"h[olds]" Madeline tight in sleep, it might equally be protecting or trapping her.
“Madeline, St Agnes’ charmèd maid, Rose, like a missioned spirit, unaware”
“She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove frayed and fled.”
“Out went the taper…Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died” (“silver taper’s
light”)
“ ‘mong thousand heraldries, And twilight saints, and dim emblazoning, A shielded
scutcheon blushes with bloods of queens and kings.”
“shone the wintry moon”
“But dares not look behind, or all the charm is fled.”
“the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed Her soothèd limbs” - long, steady series of
end-stops suggests Madeline's even breathing as she lies in a charmed sleep, as
deep and "poppied" as if she'd taken opium.
“Clasped like a missal where swart Paynims pray” - The speaker's image of
Madeline as a "missal" in a "Paynim" country speaks (unfortunately, but
appropriately for the time period Keats represents here) to an old Christian
prejudice against Muslims, making the sleeping Madeline into a creature of holy
purity incomprehensible to the "infidels" around her.
In other words: Porphyro, the speaker, and the readers might be able to feast their
eyes on Madeline as she undresses, but her dream life is completely private.
There's something both magical and horrifying about that kind of privacy, the
speaker suggests. Porphyro couldn't intrude on Madeline's dream life even if he
wanted to.
