However, this turns into something much more sensual and sexual as, unseen, he watches Madeline undress. Porphyro is lost in sensual and imaginative wonder, initial innocence transformed into intense physical desire. The poem celebrates human imagination and the warmth of love over cold piety and hatred. The poem is also one which celebrates the idea of enchantment — as if waking life needs some degree of magic or fantasy if it is to be humanly fulfilling.
Would I were steadfast as thou Bright Star! Synopsis and commentary Hush, hush! Life-giving passion Against all this negativity and darkness is set the passionate love of Madeline and Porphyro.
What is the effect of the contrast between the frosty prayers and stony piety of the Beadsman and the revelry and warm lights within the castle? What other contrasts of imagery can you find, and how do they contribute to the narrative? How does Keats use imagery to create an atmosphere of far away and long ago? Investigating themes in The Eve of St Agnes Does the poem celebrate human imagination in terms of dreaming, enchantment etc.
For the best experience on our site, be sure to turn on Javascript in your browser. Agnes' Eve--Ah, bitter chill it was! The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, And silent was the flock in woolly fold: Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Like pious incense from a censer old, Seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death, Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith.
Parents Home Homeschool College Resources. Study Guide. By John Keats. Previous Next. She leads him to Madeline's chamber where he hides in a closet. Madeline soon enters and, her mind filled with the thought of the wonderful vision she will soon have, goes to bed and falls asleep. The ritual she has performed produces the expected result; her sleep becomes the sleep of enchantment and Porphyro, looking as if immortalized, fills her dreams.
After Madeline falls asleep, Porphyro leaves the closet and approaches her bed in order to awaken her. Suddenly her eyes open wide but she remains in the grip of the magic spell. The contrast is so great that Madeline even thinks that the human Porphyro is on the point of death.
She wants her visionary Porphyro back again. Her wish is granted; the operations of magic are powerful enough to enable Porphyro, "beyond a mortal man impassion'd far," to enter her dream vision and there they are united in a mystic marriage.
The two leave the castle undetected and go out into the storm. That night the baron and all his guests have bad dreams, and Angela and the old Beadsman both die. In The Eve of St. Agnes, Keats uses the metrical romance or narrative verse form cultivated extensively by medieval poets and revived by the romantic poets. Scott and Byron became the most popular writers of verse narrative. Keats' metrical pattern is the iambic nine-line Spenserian stanza that earlier poets had found suitable for descriptive and meditative poetry.
Because of its length and slow movement, the Spenserian stanza is not well adapted to the demands of narrative verse. His vision of her "pale enchantment" contrasts implicitly with Porphyro's warmth and intensity.
Whatever the specific meaning of the Merlin reference, it is clearly involves destruction and betrayal. The nightingale allusion at the end of stanza XXIII refers to a story in Ovid's Metamorphosis; Tereus raped Philomel, his sister- in-law, and cut out her tongue so she couldn't tell anyone.
However, she told the story in a tapestry she was weaving. Understanding the tapestry, her outraged sister murdered Tereus's son and served him to Tereus for dinner. When he learned the truth, Tereus moved to kill the sisters, but the gods turned them into birds; Philomel became a nightingale. While the metaphor describes Madeline's inability to talk, a part of the St.
Agnes ritual, it also carries a hint of sexual violence or outrage. Stanza XXIV is rich with images of texture and color, paralleling the richness and color of the room, ending with the multi-meaning line "A shielded scutcheon blush'd with blood of queens and kings.
Stanza XXV contrasts the light of the cold "wintry" moon with color and warmth "gules," "rose'bloom," "silver cross soft amethyst," her hair a "glory" , suggesting both dream detachment and sensuality. The religious imagery combines with them "a glory, like a saint," "a splendid angel," and "heaven". Her purity is insisted upon as is Porphyro's being inhibited by her purity-- temporarily.
He watches as she undresses in a dream-state "pensive while she dreams away," "fancy," "the charm" or spell. If she looked behind her, she might of course see Porphyro. The next stanza continues her dream detachment. Stanzas XXVI to XXXV present a pattern that occurs with other Keatsian dreamers: the person falls in a swoon or sleep, experiences enchantment, and awakens to a different reality.
That her "bliss" is an undesirable or untenable condition is expressed in the metaphor, "As though a rose should shut, and be a bud again. Some readers hear in this event an echo of Milton's description in Paradise Lost.
In the next stanza there is a hint of luxuriousness and sensuality in the description of her bed linens. The luxuriousness and eroticism of the foods and place references prepare for their sexual fulfillment. He uses the language of religion to express his physical desires; "seraph," "heaven," "eremite" are juxtaposed to "so my soul doth ache. Unable to rouse her for a while, he wakes her with music.
But is she awake, or does she think this is still a dream, "the vision of her sleep"? The situation does fulfill her expectation of a St. Agnes vision--future husband and luxurious feast. She is disoriented "witless words" and looked "so dreamingly.
The next three stanzas are filled with images of unreality and delusion: "elfin-storm from fairy land," "Of haggard seeming, " "sleeping dragons all around," "like phantoms" repeated twice , and "be-nightmar'd.
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