Poetic thought in Keats’ The Eve of St. Agnes

                                                          By

                                  Dr. (Mrs) Jaya Lakshmi Rao V.

 

           In Keats’ The St. Agnes’s Eve, one finds a clear stream of poetic thought ‘ gloriously fused with feeling and sensuous expression’. With thought at the core, The Eve of St. Agnes contains the gradual taking off at several levels such as the story, the character exposition, the evocative quality of the climate both physical and that of the mind, the panorama of life, its imagery and the resultant sensory appeal. The poet’s power is visible in his choice of form and diction to convey in the fullest degree what he has thought feelingly. It was Keats’ belief that

 

              “ poetry should strike the reader as a wording of his own

                thoughts and appear almost a remembrance.”

 

The above observation is possible to implement only through what Keats himself calls ‘ the authenticity of imagination’. In essence, poetry is the expression of thoughts both trivial and significant. Keats’ talent lies in his ability to integrate thought, form and the sequence of events.

The year 1819 is considered to be a period of masterful production of poetry in Keats’ career. The strain of illness and his growing love for Fanny Browne contributed to the creation of brilliant poems of beauty and grace such as Hyperion, Lamia, The Eve of St. Agnes and the great Odes.

 The Eve of St. Agnes is viewed as the perfect culmination of Keats’ earlier poetic style. Written in the first rush of meeting Fanny Brawne, it conveys an atmosphere of passion and excitement in his description of the elopement of a pair of lovers. The ancient form of ballad best suited the purpose of Keats and the Spenserian stanza with its eight iambic pentameter followed by one iambic hexameter that rhymed ababbcbcc further strengthened the poetic appeal of the fine poem. It certainly enhances the intensity and subtlety of meaning implied thereof.

Sometimes an ordinary experience or an event or a tale attains vitality and significance conveyed through the poet’s pen. We don’t have to deliberately go through the experience of the poet to enjoy his art. His pen invariably takes us through those hallowed corridors of his imagination and thought so poignantly that we are made to undergo the same levels of emotion and experiencing of the psychological truth as the poet himself had done at one time, at another place.

It is remarkable that Keats in one of his letters expresses the opinion, which he fully adhered to. He said

 

             “I am certain of nothing but of the holiness of the heart's affections,

              and the truth of imagination.  What the imagination seizes as beauty

              must be truth - whether it existed before or not, - for I have the same

              idea of all our passions as of love: they are all, in their sublime,

              creative of essential beauty ….”

 

In The Eve of St. Agnes Keats’ thought is perceivable in his effort to find a way to focus on beauty, here it is the beauty of love ‘the heart’s affection’ from vanishing. This effort is visibly clear when he brings in, contrast in movement and sound, corresponding to the difference in content between the two lines and choice of words. For example,

    

                    “ St. Agnes! Ah! it is St. Agnes’ Eve-

                       Yet men will murder upon holy days:”

 

How lamentable is the human condition, which is regrettably impulsive and impervious to even holy days! Note the contrast in word play as in ‘murder’ and ‘holy days’.

The occasion of The Eve of St. Agnes is charged with religious significance. It is also a tale of love, which attains an atmosphere of devotion and trust for it takes place on such a holy day. While the devout go through ‘ harsh penance’ for ‘soul’s reprieve’ maidens in love such as the beautiful Madeline ‘brood all that wintry day on love’, praying to St. Agnes to fructify their ‘ vision of delight’. The ancient beadsman and his likes ‘ grieve for sinners’ sake’, and the pure maidens long for ‘adorings from their love’ if their ceremonies are rightly performed. The semblance between the purity of the religious- minded and that of the lovers is tellingly brought out by the thoughtful choice of the subject. Keats thus, skillfully weaves the two elements, namely religion and love into a single strand, showing their similarity.

 So we are shown how Madeline penances on that bitterly cold night for a vision of her dearly loved Porphyro who is neither of her place nor of her race. The relations between their families are so hostile that Porphyro’s arrival at the castle of the wealthy sire of Madeline is considered taboo.

 

                         “…let no buzz’d whisper tell

                          all eyes be muffled, or a hundred swords

                          will storm his heart…”

also,      

                       “ …not one breast affords

                       him any mercy, in that mansion foul

                       save one beldame, weak in body and soul.”

 

            That, however, doesn’t stop him to come riding over the moors with ‘fire in his heart’ for Madeline. The action arises at several levels. Like a maestro Keats accomplishes the feat of bringing together of religious ceremonies performed by the devout such as fasting and praying throughout the day and the telling of the rosary on the one hand, and on the other, the drunken revelries, raucous music, feasting and carousing. The contrast between the subdued and the withdrawn atmosphere of Madeline’s chamber and the waves of noise emanating from the lit halls of the castle is well orchestrated. Similar contrast in the mood of different actors should be noted.

The calm but stiff fingered beadsman whose only concern is with the other world.

                          “The joys of all his life are said and sung:

                           His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’s Eve:

                           Another way he went, and soon among

                           Rough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve,

                           And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.”

 

 The tense and tricky Angela,

 

                          “….Mercy, Porphyro! Fie thee from the place:

                            They are all here tonight, the whole blood thirsty race!”

 

She also holds the key to the couple’s fulfillment of love. Keats has used such metaphors which best bring out the beldame’s importance to Porphyro. He says,

 

                     “ Feebly she laugheth in the languid moon,

                        While Porphyro upon her face doth look,

                        Like puzzled urchin on an aged crone

                        Who keepeth clos’d a wond’rous riddle book.”

 

Porphyro’s quizzical expression is seen vividly through the simile of the ‘puzzled’ child. He is curious yet not without apprehension as he looks on the bespectacled face of the old woman holding a ‘riddle book’. The image itself makes clear Porphyro’s bewilderment and the intense concentration as he tries to read meaning in Angela’s face and anticipate her next words.

            The excitement of love-torn Porphyro whose words refer to ‘sisterhood’ and ‘St. Agnes’ wool’ also voice the saint-like secrecy in which Madeline lives.

                 

                         “ ‘Now tell me where is Madeline’ said he

                            O tell me, Angela, by the holy loom

                           Which none but secret sisterhood may see,

                           When they St. Agnes’ wool are weaving piously.”

 

 The air of anticipation and the obvious preoccupation around Madeline,

                        

                         “She danc’d along with vague regardless eyes,

                          Anxious her lips, her breathing quick and short:

                         The hallow’d hour is near at hand.”

 

 are all brought on one platform.

We invariably take a cue from the scene that Keats is also focusing attention on scanning the class differences existing even at that ancient period of human history. While the castle is well illuminated and warm, Angela the old dame, the beadsman and the mastiff seem cut off from the celebrations and bonhomie of the inmates and left out in the bitter cold, suffering the misfortunes of the poor and sick and the serving. Each thought of Keats is punctuated with an image, which renders the whole poem lively and effervescent. Onomatopoeia is used to increase the effectiveness of the auditory image.

 

                      “Meantime the frost wind blows

                        Pattering the sharp sleet

                        Against the widow’s panes.”

 

 It is a whirl of activity at the physical and at the mind level as we are taken along with Porphyro from on the threshold of the imposing castle into the nooks and corners and curtain shades to look and listen at doors ajar and then to the comfort and warmth of my lady’s chamber and back again into the open sky and chilly wintry darkness and across the moor to ride away into the melting vista of a promising glorious future with the reunited lovers. The whole gamut of events unfold before our mind’s eye so completely and without the slightest of a hesitant note by the effortless employment of befitting word pictures painted by Keats. Delectable images are chosen to suit the thought process.

The season of mists and bitter cold occupy the space of the introductory stanzas of the poem. They also voice the holiness of the event. Imagery is the life and pulse of imagination. Images are used deftly by Keats like landmarks that bring alive a whole world that he had envisaged and succeeded in conveying it to us. The first line at once transports us into the realm of a medieval milieu.

 

            St. Agnes’ Eve- ah! bitter cold it was!

            The owl, for all his featherings, was a-cold;

            The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,

            And silent was the flock in woody fold:

            Numb were the beadsman’s fingers, while he told

            His rosary, and while his frosted breath,

            Like pious incense from a censer old,

            Seemed taking flight for Heaven, without a death,

            Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his he sayeth.”

 

Striking imagery that conveys the suffering of owl and the hare the simile of the beadsman’s ‘ frosted breath’, words that remind us of the holy occasion such as ‘flight for Heaven’ and the ‘Virgin’s picture’ unerringly bring the cold climate and the religious ardour of the devout people. Then we move on with Porphyro and Angela into the interior of the castle. If we examine some passages we agree with the critic who observed.

 

               “…for evoking the feeling in the readers that the poet’s

               experience is inevitably the right one, is beyond the reach

               of mere versifiers.”

 

Keats is not a ‘mere versifier’. His ‘infinitely rich complexity of human emotion’ and ‘intellectual activity’ are found in his fusion of tone, stress and tempo.

It takes a thoughtful poet to depict heterogeneous situations. Here is Porphyro walking stealthily into Madeline’s chamber ‘half anguished’ lest he awaken her. As he lays her table for the delicacies he brought for her the intervening door goes ajar and one could listen to the loud noise of the revelry. When this happens suddenly, Keats writes:

 

                  “ The boisterous, midnight, festive clarion,

                     The kettledrum, and far- heard clarinet

                     Affray his ears, though but in dying tone,

                     The hall door shuts again and all the noise is gone.”

 

The auditory image here serves not only in enabling us to not only ‘hear’ the sounds of noise but also sense Porphyro’s alarm and the subsequent relief he experiences when the doors shut again and the noise dies away. In the preceding stanza we find an image that contrasts sharply with it.

  

                  “ Then by the bedside, where the faded moon

                     Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set

                     A table, and, half- anguished, threw thereon

                    A cloth of woven crimson, gold and jet-

                    O for some drowsy Morphean amulet!”

 

These lines bring out the noiselessness of the scene ending with the wish for a Morphean amulet, a sleep inducing charm. The succeeding ‘ boisterous’ shocks us, making us aware that the noise is at its loudest upon midnight. It is produced by ‘festive clarion’- a trumpet with clear, shrill and piercing tone. In addition to it there is a deep rumble of ‘ kettle drum’ and reedy but far-reaching sound of the clarinet. All these sounds ‘affray’ Porphyro. ‘Affray’ is an archaic verb, which means ‘ to alarm or frighten’. Keats is thus able to produce auditory image by contrasting with the preceding lines, using an archaism and by using the denotative names of the musical instruments and without aligning with onomatopoeia. Intelligent use of an image thus

 

                ‘ has associations with the other part of the poem ….so that

                  it enhances the complex fullness of the whole.”

 

Then we witness Porphyro preparing the table of delicacies for Madeline. From the closet he brings forth heaps of

 

                 “ candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;

                    With jellies soother than the creamy curd.

                    And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

                    Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d

                    From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one

                    From silken Samarcand to cedar’d Lebanon.

 

This particular stanza with an elaborate gustatory image certainly is a part of the setting in which the rest of the events are to take place. Keats brings in an array of fruits ranging in colour from yellow to red to deep blue and in taste from sweet to sour. The texture of the jellies is realized through the simile with the ‘creamy curd’. The pure syrups are savoured by the suggestive flavour of‘ the cinnamon’ conveyed through the sound of ‘tinct’. A similar image of taste is used by Keats in his Ode to Melancholy. 

 

                    “ Ay, in the very temple of Delight

                      veiled Melancholy has her Sovran shrine

                      Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue

                      Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine.”

 

An abstract and philosophical idea about melancholy is conveyed through a most pleasant gustatory image. The bursting of a juicy grape not against any palate but a ‘palate fine’ alone can result in ‘Joy’. So is the experience of Melancholy in the ‘ temple of Delight’. The poet is thus able to give

 

                      ‘ clear and vivid utterance to most subtle and

                        ambiguous feeling and it is the union of clearness

                       of vision and complete simplicity of language that

                       gives the poem its power”.

 

In a letter to Richard Woodhouse in 1818 Keats wrote,

 

                     “ As to the poetical character itself ….it is not itself-

                       it is everything and nothing- it has no character-

                       it enjoys light and shade, it lives in gusto, be it foul or fair,

                       high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.”

 

If we read the poetry of Keats and compare it with that of some of his contemporary poets, we fully understand the significance of the above observation he made. Wordsworth and Coleridge wrote based on the principles they preached. Shelley believed that

                 “ poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world” which implies his taste for spreading the message of the Spirit of freedom and Love in his poetry. Goethe judged Byron from his ‘rustic verse tales’ as lacking in vision and therefore ‘ he is a child’. Keats alone wrote of beauty objectively. He said,

                  “ poetry should be simple, sensuous and passionate.” And he practiced it in his poetry. His poetry conveys neither a message nor a theory. As a perceptive critic has observed,

                  “ He is the most direct and objective of English poets.”

His preoccupation and concentration in poetry was always with the thought of subsuming beauty, which to him is truth as well. A stanza of shimmering beauty from The Eve of St. Agnes catches our attention spontaneously thus:

 

                       “ A casement high and triple- arch’d there was,

                          All garlanded with carven imag’ries

                          Of fruits, and flowers, and bunches of knot- grass,

                         And diamonded with paints of quaint device,

                         Innumerable of stains and splendid dies,

                         As are the tiger- moth’s deep- damask’d wings;

                         And in the midst, ’among thousand heraldries,

                         And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings,

                         A shielded scutcheon blush’d with blood of queens and kings.”

 

Keats is an adept in conveying the idea of beauty through colour and frozen panorama in art. One can clearly see that Keats’ is not second hand experience.

 

                    “ It is one of sensuous, emotional and intellectual awareness

                       of life.”

 

Keats uses a language that more than conveys his thought. It enforces it by its movement, sound and imagery. The underlying wealth of ‘thought’ comes to us with vividness and immediacy. The above description of ‘ a casement’ with its spectacular ‘imag’ries’ of flowers, fruits and ‘ thousand heraldries’ among other things reminds us of another masterpiece of Keats. In his Ode on a Grecian Urn we find an equally unforgettable passage of immortalized beauty. It reads  

                                  

                                       “Thou foster-child of silence and slow time

  Sylvan historian, who canst thus express

  A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:

  What leaf-fring'd legend haunts about thy shape

   Of deities or mortals, or of both,

   In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?

   What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?

   What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?

   What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?”

 

The urn is decorated in art with ‘ a flowery tale’ which is ‘leaf-fring’d’ and has both ‘deities’ and ‘mortals’ and their ‘ mad pursuits’.

In the same poem he makes a declaration that ‘Beauty is truth and truth beauty’ which has ever since been acknowledged the world over as the most thoughtful and insightful observation ever made by him.

And so we move on to Porphyro who is intent on taking away Madeline with him that very night. As she kneels in prayer

 

                                 “ ….Porphyro grew faint

                                  she knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal thing.”

 

A love that is more than mere physical attraction, a love that was born of spiritual union has to be truth and truth wins ultimately. But let us not miss the way that Keats has with words and word-pictures.

 

                            “soon…..she lay

                              until the poppied warmth of sleep oppressed

                              her soothed limbs, and soul fatigued away.”

 

 Keats is able to negate the feeling of ill advised ‘ poppied warmth’ with the positive sounding use of ‘soothed limbs’, thus conveying the thought of pleasant warmth as tired limbs relax into sleep. In a line preceding Madeline’s bed is thus described:

                        “ …blanched linen, smooth and lavendered.”

The image that comes to our mind is that of ‘blanched linen’ which is whiter than white. Its smooth texture and delicate odour of lavender also evoke the pure and pious Madeline.

Now it is time for Madeline’s dream to become reality. Keats takes us through to the climax, we feel the magic of his poetic fervour more intensely due to visual images.

 

                   “Into her dream he melted, as the rose

                     Blendeth its odour with the violet

                     Solution sweet:….”

 

And then    “St. Agnes’ moon hath set” needless to say on the reunited lovers. The coming together of Madeline and Porphyro is beautifully realized through the mingling of the scents of the ‘rose’ and ‘violet’, indeed a sweet solution and a mixture rare. Thus in spite of ‘sleeping dragons’ and ‘ready spears’, despite ‘wind’s uproar’ and ‘gusty floor’ the lovers fled to Porphyro’s home in ‘southern moors’, to live happily ever after. The different aspects of beauty and its elevating effect contained in The Eve of St. Agnes involuntarily prove what Keats himself has said about nature. His words are:

 

                 “It makes one forget the divisions of life; age, youth, poverty

                  and riches; and refine one's sensual vision into a sort of north

      star which can never cease to be open lidded and steadfast 

      over the wonders of the great Power.”

 

It is an obvious fact that any discussion on poetic thought is inseparably bound with the sound, rhythm, diction, feeling and imagery, along with the incorporated ideas regarding life in general. The magic of Keats’ genius is beyond anyone’s appreciation. That is why even after generations since he had written, his poetry continues to hold its readers under its sway.

Most of us would agree with the following observation of a staunch champion of Keats and his poetry.

 

         “you will never grow weary of Keats. He will enthrall and

           challenge and console you- he will help you explore your

           better nature, he will show you life as he saw it, ‘ as a vale

           of soul-making’. You can have no better guide than John

           Keats. He is the best of humanity and he shows us the best

           of life.”

 

 

 

References:

 

  1. Longer poems old and new. Selected and edited by A.S. Cairncross
  2. Literature and criticism by H. Coombes
  3. The Anatomy of Poetry by Margery Boulton
  4. The elements of poetry by James R. Kruger
  5. John Keats: Selected letters (www. English history.net/keats/letters.html

 

 

 

 

 

Sender’s brief bio-data

Dr. (mrs) Jaya Lakshmi Rao V.

Reader in English, Mrs. A.V.N. College, Visakhapatnam.

Contact address:

47 North Extension, Seethammadhara, Visakhapatnam, 530013, India.

e-mail address: jayavrao@yahoo.com