Notes on the Eve of St. Agnes.

See Introduction to Isabella and The Eve of St. Agnes, p. 212.

St. Agnes was a martyr of the Christian Church who was beheaded just outside Rome in 304 because she refused to marry a Pagan, holding herself to be a bride of Christ. She was only 13--so small and slender that the smallest fetters they could find slipped over her little wrists and fell to the ground. But they stripped, tortured, and killed her. A week after her death her parents dreamed that they saw her in glory with a white lamb, the sign of purity, beside her. Hence she is always pictured with lambs (as her name signifies), and to the place of her martyrdom two lambs are yearly taken on the anniversary and blessed. Then their wool is cut off and woven by the nuns into the archbishop’s cloak, or pallium (see l. 70).

For the legend connected with the Eve of the Saint’s anniversary, to which Keats refers, see st. vi.

Metre. That of the Faerie Queene.

PAGE 83. ll. 5-6. told His rosary. Cf. Isabella, ll. 87-8.

l. 8. without a death. The ‘flight to heaven’ obscures the simile of the incense, and his breath is thought of as a departing soul.

PAGE 84. l. 12. meagre, barefoot, wan. Such a compression of a description into three bare epithets is frequent in Keats’s poetry. He shows his marvellous power in the unerring choice of adjective; and their enumeration in this way has, from its very simplicity, an extraordinary force.

l. 15. purgatorial rails, rails which enclose them in a place of torture.

l. 16. dumb orat’ries. The transference of the adjective from person to place helps to give us the mysterious sense of life in inanimate things. Cf. Hyperion, iii. 8; Ode to a Nightingale, l. 66.

l. 22. already . . . rung. He was dead to the world. But this hint should also prepare us for the conclusion of the poem.

PAGE 85. l. 31. ’gan to chide. l. 32. ready with their pride. l. 34. ever eager-eyed. l. 36. with hair . . . breasts. As if trumpets, rooms, and carved angels were all alive. See Introduction, p. 212.

l. 37. argent, silver. They were all glittering with rich robes and arms.

PAGE 86. l. 56. yearning . . . pain, expressing all the exquisite beauty and pathos of the music; and moreover seeming to give it conscious life.

PAGE 87. l. 64. danc’d, conveying all her restlessness and impatience as well as the lightness of her step.

l. 70. amort, deadened, dull. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, IV. iii. 36, ‘What sweeting! all amort.’

l. 71. See note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

l. 77. Buttress’d from moonlight. A picture of the castle and of the night, as well as of Porphyro’s position.

PAGE 88. ll. 82 seq. Compare the situation of these lovers with that of Romeo and Juliet.

l. 90. beldame, old woman. Shakespeare generally uses the word in an uncomplimentary sense--‘hag’--but it is not so used here. The word is used by Spenser in its derivative sense, ‘Fair lady,’ Faerie Queene, ii. 43.

PAGE 89. l. 110. Brushing . . . plume. This line both adds to our picture of Porphyro and vividly brings before us the character of the place he was entering--unsuited to the splendid cavalier.

l. 113. Pale, lattic’d, chill. Cf. l. 12, note.

l. 115. by the holy loom, on which the nuns spin. See l. 71 and note on St. Agnes, p. 224.

PAGE 90. l. 120. Thou must . . . sieve. Supposed to be one of the commonest signs of supernatural power. Cf. Macbeth, I. iii. 8.

l. 133. brook, check. An incorrect use of the word, which really means bear or permit.

PAGE 92. ll. 155-6. churchyard . . . toll. Unconscious prophecy. Cf. The Bedesman, l. 22.

l. 168. While . . . coverlet. All the wonders of Madeline’s imagination.

l. 171. Since Merlin . . . debt. Referring to the old legend that Merlin had for father an incubus or demon, and was himself a demon of evil, though his innate wickedness was driven out by baptism. Thus his ‘debt’ to the demon was his existence, which he paid when Vivien compassed his destruction by means of a spell which he had taught her. Keats refers to the storm which is said to have raged that night, which Tennyson also describes in Merlin and Vivien. The source whence the story came to Keats has not been ascertained.

PAGE 93. l. 173. cates, provisions. Cf. Taming of the Shrew, II. i. 187:--

Kate of Kate Hall--my super-dainty Kate, For dainties are all cates.

We still use the verb ‘to cater’ as in l. 177.

l. 174. tambour frame, embroidery-frame.

l. 185. espied, spying. Dim, because it would be from a dark corner; also the spy would be but dimly visible to her old eyes.

l. 187. silken . . . chaste. Cf. ll. 12, 113.

l. 188. covert, hiding. Cf. Isabella, l. 221.

PAGE 94. l. 198. fray’d, frightened.

l. 203. No uttered . . . betide. Another of the conditions of the vision was evidently silence.

PAGE 95. ll. 208 seq. Compare Coleridge’s description of Christabel’s room: Christabel, i. 175-83.

l. 218. gules, blood-red.

PAGE 96. l. 226. Vespers. Cf. Isabella, l. 21, ll. 226-34. See Introduction, p. 213.

l. 237. poppied, because of the sleep-giving property of the poppy-heads.

l. 241. Clasp’d . . . pray. The sacredness of her beauty is felt here.

missal, prayer-book.

PAGE 97. l. 247. To wake . . . tenderness. He waited to hear, by the sound of her breathing, that she was asleep.

l. 250. Noiseless . . . wilderness. We picture a man creeping over a wide plain, fearing that any sound he makes will arouse some wild beast or other frightful thing.

l. 257. Morphean. Morpheus was the god of sleep.

amulet, charm.

l. 258. boisterous . . . festive. Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187.

l. 261. and . . . gone. The cadence of this line is peculiarly adapted to express a dying-away of sound.

PAGE 98. l. 266. soother, sweeter, more delightful. An incorrect use of the word. Sooth really means truth.

l. 267. tinct, flavoured; usually applied to colour, not to taste.

l. 268. argosy, merchant-ship. Cf. Merchant of Venice, I. i. 9, ‘Your argosies with portly sail.’

PAGE 99. l. 287. Before he desired a ‘Morphean amulet’; now he wishes to release his lady’s eyes from the charm of sleep.

l. 288. woofed phantasies. Fancies confused as woven threads. Cf. Isabella, l. 292.

l. 292. ’La belle . . . mercy.’ This stirred Keats’s imagination, and he produced the wonderful, mystic ballad of this title (see p. 213).

l. 296. affrayed, frightened. Cf. l. 198.

PAGE 100. ll. 298-9. Cf. Donne’s poem, The Dream:--

My dream thou brokest not, but continued’st it.

l. 300. painful change, his paleness.

l. 311. pallid, chill, and drear. Cf. ll. 12, 112, 187, 258.

PAGE 101. l. 323. Love’s alarum, warning them to speed away.

l. 325. flaw, gust of wind. Cf. Coriolanus, V. iii. 74; Hamlet, V. i. 239.

l. 333. unpruned, not trimmed.

PAGE 102. l. 343. elfin-storm. The beldame has suggested that he must be ‘liege-lord of all the elves and fays’.

l. 351. o’er . . . moors. A happy suggestion of a warmer clime.

PAGE 103. l. 355. darkling. Cf. King Lear, I. iv. 237: ‘So out went the candle and we were left darkling.’ Cf. Ode to a Nightingale, l. 51.

l. 360. And . . . floor. There is the very sound of the wind in this line.

PAGE 104. ll. 375-8. Angela . . . cold. The death of these two leaves us with the thought of a young, bright world for the lovers to enjoy; whilst at the same time it completes the contrast, which the first introduction of the old bedesman suggested, between the old, the poor, and the joyless, and the young, the rich, and the happy.

INTRODUCTION TO THE ODE TO A NIGHTINGALE, ODE ON A GRECIAN URN, ODE ON MELANCHOLY, AND TO AUTUMN.

These four odes, which were all written in 1819, the first three in the early months of that year, ought to be considered together, since the same strain of thought runs through them all and, taken all together, they seem to sum up Keats’s philosophy.

In all of them the poet looks upon life as it is, and the eternal principle of beauty, in the first three seeing them in sharp contrast; in the last reconciling them, and leaving us content.

The first-written of the four, the Ode to a Nightingale, is the most passionately human and personal of them all. For Keats wrote it soon after the death of his brother Tom, whom he had loved devotedly and himself nursed to the end. He was feeling keenly the tragedy of a world ‘where youth grows pale, and spectre-thin, and dies’, and the song of the nightingale, heard in a friend’s garden at Hampstead, made him long to escape with it from this world of realities and sorrows to the world of ideal beauty, which it seemed to him somehow to stand for and suggest. He did not think of the nightingale as an individual bird, but of its song, which had been beautiful for centuries and would continue to be beautiful long after his generation had passed away; and the thought of this undying loveliness he contrasted bitterly with our feverishly sad and short life. When, by the power of imagination, he had left the world behind him and was absorbed in the vision of beauty roused by the bird’s song, he longed for death rather than a return to disillusionment.

So in the Grecian Urn he contrasts unsatisfying human life with art, which is everlastingly beautiful. The figures on the vase lack one thing only--reality,--whilst on the other hand they are happy in not being subject to trouble, change, or death. The thought is sad, yet Keats closes this ode triumphantly, not, as in The Nightingale, on a note of disappointment. The beauty of this Greek sculpture, truly felt, teaches us that beauty at any rate is real and lasting, and that utter belief in beauty is the one thing needful in life.

In the Ode on Melancholy Keats, in a more bitter mood, finds the presence, in a fleeting world, of eternal beauty the source of the deepest melancholy. To encourage your melancholy mood, he tells us, do not look on the things counted sad, but on the most beautiful, which are only quickly-fading manifestations of the everlasting principle of beauty. It is then, when a man most deeply loves the beautiful, when he uses his capacities of joy to the utmost, that the full bitterness of the contrast between the real and the ideal comes home to him and crushes him. If he did not feel so much he would not suffer so much; if he loved beauty less he would care less that he could not hold it long.

But in the ode To Autumn Keats attains to the serenity he has been seeking. In this unparalleled description of a richly beautiful autumn day he conveys to us all the peace and comfort which his spirit receives. He does not philosophize upon the spectacle or draw a moral from it, but he shows us how in nature beauty is ever present. To the momentary regret for spring he replies with praise of the present hour, concluding with an exquisite description of the sounds of autumn--its music, as beautiful as that of spring. Hitherto he has lamented the insecurity of a man’s hold upon the beautiful, though he has never doubted the reality of beauty and the worth of its worship to man. Now, under the influence of nature, he intuitively knows that beauty once seen and grasped is man’s possession for ever. He is in much the same position that Wordsworth was when he declared that

Nature never did betray The heart that loved her; ‘tis her privilege, Through all the years of this our life, to lead From joy to joy: for she can so inform The mind that is within us, so impress With quietness and beauty, and so feed With lofty thoughts, that neither evil tongues, Rash judgments, nor the sneers of selfish men, Nor greetings where no kindness is, nor all The dreary intercourse of daily life, Shall e’er prevail against us, or disturb Our cheerful faith, that all which we behold Is full of blessings.

This was not the last poem that Keats wrote, but it was the last which he wrote in the fulness of his powers. We can scarcely help wishing that, beautiful as were some of the productions of his last feverish year of life, this perfect ode, expressing so serene and untroubled a mood, might have been his last word to the world.