194 Poems of John Keats. 



might break the spell. He begins an ancient ditty, and has scarcely 

 touched the strings, when, 



"Thereat disturbed, she uttered a soft moan. 

 He ceased : she panted quick, and suddenly 

 Her blue aflfrayed eyes wide open shone ; 

 Upon his knees he sank, pale as smooth sculptured stone!" 



Need we go on with this touching picture? need we say how Made- 

 line, half-slumbering and half-awake, yet quite unnerved by the 

 scenery and the occasion, breathed into Porphyro's ear the whisper 

 of her love for him, and, in clasping as she deemed an impalpable 

 vision of the night, drew unto her the form of Porphyro himself; 

 and how then 



" The frost-wind blew 

 Like love's alarum, pattering the sharp sleet 

 Against the window frames : St. Agnes eve hath set!" 



Yes, the charm of this eventful eve hath now ended, but not without 

 a happy consummation. Loving and loved, the maiden and Por- 

 phyro are from this night united ; he who hath defied hostility and 

 danger to see his Madeline, she who hath waken in the dead of night, 

 by the glimpses of the fading moon to find her Porphyro kneeling 

 like sculptured stone by her chaste couch, can never again part. 

 Such an union St. Agnes herself must smile upon, and join their 

 hands as indissolubly as the hearts of these two faithful lovers have 

 been long since joined. Yet, reader, the picture which has been 

 presented to you, combining though it did love and purity, honour 

 and valour, old age and sanctity, with its gothic scenery and moon- 

 light beauty, is after all but a dream. The castle was a spectral 

 illusion conjured up by enchantment; the maiden a spiritual abstrac- 

 tion; the cavalier an ideal being called into momentary life, to 

 vanish when his part was done; and the remaining objects but 

 glimpses of light and shade, as varying and shifting as the moonbeams 

 amid which they moved. If there had been any show of mortality 

 in this chaste picture it would have lost much of its attraction. The 

 scene, the time, the illusions, should all have been as they are ; from 

 first to last not a hue or a tint hath been thrown on the canvass which 

 ought not to have been there. The scene opened with a wintry 

 aspect ; the time slowly drew on to midnight, when the charm of St. 

 Agnes eve was to be complete ; the illusions from their commence- 

 ment grew gradually more discernible, and gained a climax, which, 

 after the two spirits who alone appeared vital have joined to part no 

 more, is most chastely bodied forth in the concluding stanzas, com- 

 bining all that is wintry, mysterious, and visionary, and giving a 

 finishing master touch to the whole picture. With these we shall con- 

 clude our present notice: \ 



" She hurried at his words, beset with fears, 

 For there were dangerous foemen all around, 

 At glaring watch perchance with ready spears. 

 Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found; 



