188 Poems of John Keats. 



glove of her lost lover, commenced digging for his body, more 

 eagerly than misers for a treasure, bruising her fair limbs upon the 

 hard mould, and only pausing in her sad avocation to put back the 

 clustering masses of golden hair that blinded her tearless eyes, how 

 at length she found the head of her Lorenzo, and having carefully 

 placed it in mould, how it became a beautiful basil plant, giving forth 

 a sweeter perfume than any else in all Florence, while Isabel hung 

 over it, forgetting every other object of the living world, deriving 

 no consolation from the blue heavens, or light, or darkness, or beauty, 

 or change, but ever weeping on the perfumed leaflets of that one 

 unconscious plant, till, like a drooping lily of the vale, she pined away 

 and died, and lastly, how her brothers, smitten foriheir cruel crime, 

 went voluntarily away to a lasting banishment. ' Such is Keats's 

 "Isabella," a simple, unaffected, touching little poem, perfect in all 

 its parts, and, in spite of the difficulty of the subject, carrying with it 

 quite enough to interest the general reader. 



The " St. Agnes Eve" is cast in a much deeper vein of poetry than 

 the poem we have just noticed. Had Keats left behind him nothing 

 else, this vivid picture of chaste female beauty and manly honour, 

 set off by the dim back-ground, with its appropriate objects, of this 

 mysterious eve, would have been in itself sufficient to have cancelled 

 the melancholy epitaph which on his death-bed the young poet 

 desired should be placed upon his grave.* No one can read the 

 " St. Agnes Eve" without feeling that it evinces genius of a high 

 order; but let us say one word of the legend which gave rise to it. 

 " St. Agnes" was a Roman virgin, and having suffered martyrdom in 

 the reign of the emperor Dioclesian, her parents are said to have 

 seen a vision of her, surrounded by angels, and attended by a white 

 lamb, the emblem of her own innocence. From this martyrdom a 

 superstition arose, that once in the year (the eve of January 21st), 

 by performing certain ceremonies, maidens may obtain a sight of 

 their future husbands, at the witching hour of midnight, in their 

 dreams. From such a harmless superstition as this, let us next see 

 what a chaste and exquisite poem Keats has written ; its opening is 

 admirable : 



" St. Agnes Eve ah! bitter chill it was ! 

 The owl for all his feathers was a-coldj 

 The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, 

 And silent was the flock in wintry 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." 

 * * * * 



Here is a sketch of winter, as expressive, chilling, and natural, as if 

 whole volumes had been written of it. The scene is laid in the 

 chapel of a baronial castle, the time near midnight, and the first 



* Here lies one 

 Whose name was writ in water ! 



