If John Keats Was Alive Today, He’d Be a Heartbreaker…

by Fancy Free

The spiritual and the covertly sexual come together in Keats’ divine masterpiece,  “The Eve of St. Agnes” to give hopeless romantic readers a taste of sensual love at its best. Very similar to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, Keats’ characters Madeline and Porphyro defy the odds of being together because of family feuds and have a very special night on the mythic, legendary eve of St. Agnes. Magic and lore are explored so eloquently with Keats’ vivid descriptions of winter, night, heraldry, youth and love. It is a textured dream of a poem with luxurious descriptions of complex contrasts of the realities of passion.

“The Eve of St. Agnes” is a world of opposites. From the characters of the Beadsman and Angela to the stark contrast in the cold dark descriptions of the season to the fiery and humid, romantic air in the room of Madeline, we begin to see the difference between the notion of love and what it actually is. Keats places his sexual suggestion throughout the poem so elusively that if a reader isn’t careful, they may miss all the subtle innuendoes of his attempt to defy the sign of the times and the repressed passion that swelled there. The images of the moon and enchantment and magic are throughout, giving us pause to reflect on the wonder of love from afar and chastity, making us remember the pangs of first desire and the sacredness of virginity.

Using Spenserian stanzas, Keats weaves a tale of surreal, lucid and delectable bliss that ends in unknown territory, leaving the reader guessing at a “happily ever after” ending. But before that there are stanzas that mystify and delight, like stanza 25:

           “Full on this casement shone the wintry moon,
            And threw warm gules on Madeline’s fair breast,
            As down she knelt for heaven’s grace and boon;
            Rose-bloom fell on her hands, together prest,
            And on her silver cross soft amethyst,
            And on her hair a glory, like a saint:
            She seem’d a splendid angel, newly drest,
            Save wings, for heaven; -Porphyro grew faint;
            She knelt, so pure a thing, so free from mortal taint.”

This stanza conjures up images that are deeply full of longing and desire as Porphyro watches his beloved kneel and pray in the moonlight. He can barely contain himself as he perceives her as an angel of heaven or a saint, innocent, pure and virginal. The coy mixture of chastity and sexual longing come to life in this brief but vital excerpt.

My favorite stanza in the poem is stanza 36, which is for me, the climax of the poem as well as the lovers’ passionate climax; where the sensual, sexual and spiritual unite:

           “Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far
            At these voluptuous accents, he arose
            Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star
            Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;
            Into her dream he melted, as a rose
            Blendeth its odour with the violet,-
            Solution sweet; meantime the frost-wind blows,
            Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet
            Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.”

Here we see the contrast of how warm and fragrant it is in Madeline’s room while the cold storm rages outside and they lose their virginity to one another; ah, there’s nothing like the first time.  But then what happens?

Porphyro declares he will be Madeline’s knight and savior and they agree to elope out into the night together. They literally decide to brave the storm. Needless to say, in the cold, harsh reality of what should be the “afterglow” of a night of passionate love-making, they venture out into the unknown and Keats ends the poem with an uncertainty that leaves the reader a bit uncomfortable of how romantic love really works in the final stanza 42:

           “And they are gone: ay, ages long ago
            These lovers fled away into the storm.
            That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe,
            And all his warrior-guests, with shade and form
            Of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm,
            Were long be-nightmar’d. Angela the old
            Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform;
            The Beadsman, after thousand aves told,
            For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold.”

The ending is quite sad with worrying parents and almost scary with visions of witches and demons that will hail the lovers and thwart their desire for each other. Angela dies with the guilt of letting Porphyro sneak into Madeline’s bedchamber and the Beadsman cannot pray enough for their safe return that never comes while he lives. The outcome for these lovers looks just as bleak as it did for Romeo and Juliet, leaving the reader with a lesson to be learned on young, forbidden and careless love.  As much as Keats depicts a wonderful and magical affair, he stays grounded in his Romantic roots that all does not work out the way it necessarily should, with a happy ending.