thumb|250px|[[The Eve of St Agnes (painting)|The Eve of St Agnes, John Everett Millais ]]

The Eve of St. Agnes is a Romantic narrative poem of 42 Spenserian stanzas set in the Middle Ages. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems (1820). The poem was considered by many of Keats's contemporaries and the succeeding Victorians to be one of his finest and was influential in 19th-century literature.

The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes' Eve). St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in 4th-century Rome. The eve falls on 20 January; the feast day on the 21st. The divinations referred to by Keats in this poem are referred to by John Aubrey in his Miscellanies (1696) as being associated with St. Agnes' night.

Background

Keats based his poem on the folk belief that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; that is, she would go to bed without any supper, and transfer pins one by one from a pincushion to a sleeve while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream.

A Scottish version of the ritual would involve young women meeting together on St. Agnes's Eve at midnight; they would go, one by one, into a remote field and throw in some grain, after which they repeated the following rhyme in a prayer to St. Agnes: "Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair,

Hither, hither, now repair;

Bonny Agnes, let me see

The lad who is to marry me." A statue of Keats resides in Eastgate Square in Chichester to commemorate the fact he started this poem there. The statue was unveiled by Chichester-based actress Dame Patricia Routledge.

In the original version of his poem, Keats emphasised the young lovers' sexuality, but his publishers, who feared public reaction, forced him to tone down the eroticism.

Plot

thumb|250px|The Flight of Madeline and Porphyro, painting by [[William Holman Hunt]]

On a bitterly chill night, an elderly beadsman says his prayers in the chapel of the ancestral home of Madeline's family, where a loud party has begun. Madeline pines for the love of Porphyro, sworn enemy to her kin. She has heard 'old dames full many times declare' that she may receive sweet dreams of her lover if, on this night, St. Agnes' Eve, she retires to bed following the proper rituals.

Later that night, Porphyro makes his way to the castle and braves entry, seeking out Angela, an elderly woman friendly to his family, and importuning her to lead him to Madeline's room at night, where he may but gaze upon her sleeping form. Angela is persuaded only with difficulty, and first obtains some food from the banquet for them. In it, Keats blends a medieval legend with a tale of star-crossed lovers, such as Romeo and Juliet and the traditional French romance Floris and Blancheflour.

Alluded to by others

  • Rudyard Kipling's short story "Wireless" (1902) has the narrator witnessing a recreation of the poem by a man in a trance who, by virtue of the similarities of his situation to that of Keats (he is a consumptive apothecary's assistant), becomes "tuned" to the poet.
  • H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Outsider" features the final stanza of the poem as an epigraph.
  • Harry Clarke's The Eve of St. Agnes is a stained glass masterpiece inspired by the poem.
  • Robert Hunter’s The Silver Snarling Trumpet: The Birth of the Grateful Dead (2024 [1962]) takes its title from the fourth stanza of Keats’s poem.

References

  • 'St. Agnes Eve', Text of 'St. Agnes' Eve' by Keats from Bartleby.
  • The Eve of St. Agnes at Internet Archive (scanned books color illustrated). Notable editions:
  • The Eve of St. Agnes (1900) calligraphy by Ralph Fletcher Seymour, "Introduction" by Edmund Gosse
  • The Eve of St. Agnes (1885) illus. by Edmund H. Garrett
  • The Theme of The Eve of St. Agnes in the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, An analysis of the poem at Victorianweb