The eve is called the vigil and the day is called the feast. There appears to be only one other poem that also uses this theme, which is Alfred Lord Tennyson's much shorter "St. Agnes' Eve", first published in 1837. The eve of St. Agnes is 20th January and the consecrated day in January 21st. He revised the work at Winchester in September; it was first published in 1820. Out went the taper as she hurried in; The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes Eve). Why did they feel it could express what they wanted to say in their art, visual or otherwise? The owl, for all his feathers, was a-cold; 1-12]. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is one of Keats’s most challenging poems when it comes to the poet’s emotions and beliefs on social structures, life, death, men, and women. Porphyro during the drunkenness attending the revelry (The Eve of St. Agnes), Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire, The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts, Publications of the Modern Language Association of America, Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, Pre-Raphaelites, Aesthetes, and Decadents, Four Keats Poems and the Pre-Raphaelite Vision of the Middle Ages, Shadows Cast by The Light of the World: William Holman Hunt's Religious Paintings, 1893-1905. His next rendition of the same poem from 1857 for the Moxon Tennyson is even smaller than the first (4.5 x 3.3 inches) and is purely book illustration. View pregame, in-game and post-game details from the St. Agnes Academy (Houston, TX) @ St. John XXIII (Katy, TX) conference softball game on Thu, 4/12/2018. Finally, they run away from the castle without anyone’s notice. The original study for the painting was done in 1849 and shows Madeline's clothes as they fall from her body. Collins, John Churton. All garlanded with carven imag'ries |, Copyright © www.bachelorandmaster.com All Rights Reserved. Line 8, unshorn: On St. Agnes's Day, two lambs were blessed during mass; nuns later spun and wove their wool. Millais does not approve of her situation any more than he does Mariana's miserable one, as her virginity is a counterpart to the freezing landscape outside; Leng cites Herbert Sussman in saying that "'the twisted body of the crucified Christ above her personal altar is equated with the gnarled leafless tree in the garden.'" Jones, Terry H. "Agnes of Rome." These lines are filled with detailed descriptions of the architecture of and objects in Madeline's room, and one could easily imagine how an artist could paint a picture based on these descriptions. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. St. Agnes Cathedral offers bus service to parishioners who are unable to drive to Sunday Mass. The Eve of St. Agnes Written in 1819, published in 1820 Summary 1-111 The narrator sets the scene: it is a cold night on St. Agnes' Eve. The Art Bulletin. The little that he said about the work is that it is" 'on a popular superstition'" (32), and also that he wrote at least two drafts of the poem before it was published in 1820, the first, according to critics, more "innocent" (25) and the second more explicitly sexual than the published version. Najarian, James. 'The Eve of St Agnes' is a long, romantic poem by John Keats. [Pointon 114]. Rossetti's eroticized Fair Lady), and the addition of moonlight streaming through the window. Of the members of the PRB, he was the most serious, most moralizing, and after his conversion, the most religious. 12 December 2004. Readers may want to consider why Keats references himself. She was so enchanted with the visionary Porphyro that she wanted him back. Stanza XI Line 2, wand: staff or stick and – Jane Campion, Bright Star • Poetry and Poetry – Sylvia Plath, Ariel. Landow, George P. "Shadows Cast by The Light of the World: William Holman Hunt's Religious Paintings, 1893-1905." Saint Agnes's Eve. Furthermore, in this somewhat ambiguous merger of Christ and an mortal lover, Tennyson elevates sensual love to a higher plane of value (which is one way of interpreting Keats' poem -- this is another way in which the second poem draws from the first ). [ll. One of Keat’s best-loved poems, published in 1820, is called ‘The Eve of St Agnes’ and tells the story of Madeline and her lover Porphyro. / St. Agnes' Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! Or this first snowdrop of the year Pointon, Marcia. Now prepare, Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed; She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled. In biographical context, this reading of the drawing is quite reasonable. Dante Rossetti and the Pre-Raphaelite Movement. Along similar lines, Paul Barlow makes the case for a different sort of moral representation in the painting in his essay "Pre-Raphaelitism and Post-Raphaelitism: the articulation of fantasy and the problem of pictorial space." In his book Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts, Grant F. Scott claims, [I]t was this notion of the poem as a storehouse of "beauties," as a material object rather than a transparent narrative, that came to epitomize the Pre-Raphaelite response. In drear nighted December. Even William Michael Rossetti, a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, said "'The power of "The Eve of St. Agnes" . This reading of the poem for all intents and purposes falls under Stillinger's thirty-fifth interpretation in his list, that of "Pure aestheticism: art is the only thing that matters" (Stillinger 61). And so St. Agnes eve is January 20th. would I were steadfast as thou art; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; When I have fears that I may cease to be On the eve of St Agnes’s feast day (20 January), virgins used divinations to ‘discover’ their future husbands. Explore The Eve of St. Agnes He concludes by saying that art was by Keats's own intention a fundamental subject of "The Eve of St. Agnes" and that his overt concern with aesthetics made him "an instant hero to the Pre-Raphaelites" (61). Right: St. Agnes' Eve from the Moxon Tennyson -- both by John Everett Millais. Wood, Esther. It is widely considered to be amongst his finest poems and was influential in 19th century literature. Eve of St Agnes, London, United Kingdom. On this same evening, Porphyro, who is the lover of Madeline, comes to her castle without being noticed. Consequently, “The Eve of St. Agnes” becomes the arena of the conflict between femininity and masculinity, which preoccupied the poet during the composition of the poem. [ll. Of all the works, artistic or literary, that use the subject of St. Agnes' Eve as its basis, John Keats 's narrative poem "The Eve of St. Agnes" written in 1819 is undoubtedly the most famous. Video conferencing best practices: Tips to make meeting online even better ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ by John Keats is a poem of epic length written in Spenserian, nine-line style. John Keats 1899. The work is typically early Pre-Raphaelite in its detail, its even lighting, and its bright "blue-greens, purples, violets, which came to be one of the marks of Pre-Raphaelite painting" (Watkinson 39), and in its close attention to nature. Millais." After she falls asleep, he comes closer to her and awakens her by playing a lute. John Keats was born in London on 31 October 1795, the eldest of Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats’s four children. Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air, and visions wide: No utter’d syllable, or, woe betide! Marcia Pointon. 13 December 2004. In this vein "St Agnes' Eve" might articulate the wish to be reunited with Hallam, especially if one reads the last line of the poem, "The Bridegroom with his bride!" Dante Gabriel Rossetti saw the painting when the Royal Academy exhibited it that year, and though previously he had been superficially acquainted with Hunt, "[h]e now sought Hunt out loudly declaring that his 'picture of "The Eve of St. Agnes" was the best in the collection'" (Watkinson 40). Hunt's picture illustrates stanza forty-one of Keats's poem: They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall; The Pre-Raphaelites. This poem is descriptive in nature like a painting where every minute detail is vividly presented. Out went the taper as she hurried in; Its little smoke, in pallid moonshine, died: She closed the door, she panted, all akin To spirits of the air, and visions wide: No utter'd syllable, or, woe betide! Now prepare, Young Porphyro, for gazing on that bed; She comes, she comes again, like ring-dove fray'd and fled. Some critics compare this expression of romantic love to Keats’s love affair with Fanny Brawne. Madeline is transformed into a "splendid angel" by the stained glass as the moonlight shines through it. The scene in the chamber is so colorfully explained that one can make the scene in his mind and feel the innate sensuousness of the poet. Eve of St. Agnes. BachelorandMaster, 8 Aug. 2017, bachelorandmaster.com/britishandamericanpoetry/the-eve-of-st-agnes.html. Structure and versification in The Eve of St Agnes. Oct. 20, 2020. Keats has a rep for being the least "worldly" of the Romantic poets—he didn't get a fancy education, he didn't have a trust fund to fall back on, and he wasn't sashaying his way through the conti... Tough-o-Meter. Reading "The Eve of St. Agnes". La Belle Dame sans Merci; To Autumn; Bright star! Dante Gabriel Rossetti was particularly fascinated by the medieval elements of Keats's poems, and in fact it was Rossetti "who chose Keats as spiritual leader of the Brotherhood: he bragged that he had discovered and then popularized Keats's verses between 1844 and 1846. The Eve Of St. Agnes by John Keats. It would seem that all of the artistic translations of Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes" created by Pre-Raphaelites and their associates focus on the tension between romantic and sexual love abd between love and aesthetics; given the nature of Pre-Raphaelitism (especially early Pre-Raphaelitism, which was the period in which most of the renditions were created) this is not surprising. Pre-Raphaelite Art and Design. The speaker goes from contrasting all that is mortal with all that is heavenly (finding the mortal lacking), prays for release into God's kingdom, and ends with a joyful fantasy of being united with Christ. The poem is named for the evening before the feast of Saint Agnes, which falls on January 21st. Barlow, Paul. | The Eve of St Agnes was written at Chichester and Bedhampton during the last half of January 1819. "St. Agnes! And her wish is granted. La Belle Dame sans Merci; To Autumn; Bright star! V. Neufeldt. would I were steadfast as thou art; Ode to a Nightingale; Ode on a Grecian Urn; When I have fears that I may cease to be The eve of her feast day, January 20th, became in European folklore a day when girls could practice certain divinatory rituals before they went to bed in order to see their future husbands in their dreams. St Agnes was a young Roman girl who became a convert to Christianity, and who was persecuted and finally she suffered death for her faith under the emperor Diocletian. 2. The hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass, Millais drew the picture on the now infamous trip to Glenfinals with John Ruskin and Ruskin's wife Effie, during which Millais and Effie fell in love. In a letter to her mother, Effie writes that the nun's face bears a remarkable resemblance to the face of Millais himself. She became the patron saint of virgins, betrothed couples, and chastity in general, and iconographers almost always represent her with a lamb, which signifies her virginity. On the eve of St Agnes’s feast day (20 January), virgins used divinations to ‘discover’ their future husbands. The conflict between the real and the artificial is never resolved. 13 December 2004. Imagination gives insights into the experience of the hereafter. To a Friend who sent me some Roses. Marcia Pointon. and – Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters. What the poem lacks for some readers is significant content; it is, for them, "one long sensuous utterance," "a mere fairy-tale romance, unhappily short on meaning." [E. Wood 249]. in making pictures out of words, or turning words into pictures'" (Scott 86), and Holman Hunt, who created the first important visual rendering of the poem, wrote to Millais in recommending it as paintable subject matter that "St. Agnes" was "'brimful of beauties that will enchant you'" (Scott 87). Yet God might not be the only thing that the speaker longs for when he wishes that his soul would fly to Heaven. https://www.berfrois.com/2015/10/the-eve-of-st-agnes-john-keats Scented candles in amazing fragrances for all the seasons. For him, romantic love is a heavenly experience and to give his romantic lovers this beautiful and enchanting experience, he puts them under the spell of magic. The description of the stained window glass in the chamber of Madeline is the most beautiful example of his influential appealing power to the sight. Colour differences in the pictures are created by the camera. The Eve of St Agnes, XXIII. How sales EQ can help you close more deals; Oct. 17, 2020. lies . my lady fair the conjuror plays This very night: good angels her deceive! The shadows of the convent-towers Publications of the Modern Language Association of America. Madeline in a beautiful thought of her lover to come in the dream enters her room and falls asleep. Sacraments Confessions Saturday, Eve of Holy Day, and Eve of First Friday from 4:00 to 4:45 p.m. Like pious incense from a censer old, Visual Arts —> The Eve of St. Agnes I. ST. AGNES’ Eve—Ah, bitter chill it was! Perhaps Keats was inspired by the calendar – St Agnes’s feast is celebrated on 21 January. When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware: With silver taper's light, and pious care, She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led To a safe level matting. But conversely, another interpretation of the painting proposed in 1894 by Esther Wood claims that there are no references to Madeline's sexuality in the scene and that it in fact highlights her innocence: There is about her an extraordinary spiritual loveliness, born of the utter artlessness and sincerity of her pose and the girlish innocence of her look, as if the absolute naturalness of the situation were its own protection from all thought of ill. Everything around her speaks of her simple holiness and purity, and seals, as it were, the pledge of the answering purity of Porphyro's love. The poem was considered by many of Keats's contemporaries and the succeeding Victorians to be one of his … By suggesting this heavenly union, he implies that the speaker's wish for his soul to follow his breath to heaven may not be as sad at it first appears, and that the Beadsman's death at the end of "The Eve of St. Agnes" "among his ashes cold" (l. 378) is only dismal from this world's point of view. In The Eve of St Agnes it is the richness of the sensations, the magic of the place-names and the haunting verbal music that most commonly attract attention. In "Millais's "Mariana": Literary Painting, the Pre-Raphaelite Gothic, and the Iconology of the Marian Artist", Andrew Leng calls attention to the similarities between this drawing by Millais and his full sized painting Mariana done in 1851, focusing on the likenesses in subject matter (both show lone women standing before an open window) and iconography. The setting of the poem is a medieval castle, the time is cold January 20th, the eve of the Feast of St. Agnes. . n the twenty-first of January in what is customarily believed to be the year 304 A.D., a thirteen-year-old Christian girl, Agnes of Rome, was martyred when she refused to sacrifice to the pagan gods and lose her virginity by rape. The deliberate use of bitter cold contrasts with the warm love of Madeline and Porphyro. Luckily he meets Madeline’s old nurse, Angela, who is friend to Porphyro. Blog. I. [87]. Stillinger, Jack. "The artist as ethnographer: Holman Hunt and the Holy Land." In the chapter "Keats, Sexuality, and Tennyson's Reticence" from his book Victorian Keats, James Najarian proposes that Tennyson "uses Keats to hint at an eroticism that depends on Keats's sexually borderline reputation [Najarian explains how the Victorians viewed Keats as an effeminate and not completely heteronormative poet] and on the suggestion of not entirely heterosexual masculine desire in his verse" (71). The spell of the magic of the night came to an end. Oct. 20, 2020. 13 December 2004. http://www.jstor.org. Leng calls the nun in St. Agnes' Eve the "ascetic counterpart of Mariana" in that the nun longs for the absent Christ and says that the crucifix in front of her altar is "the nun's equivalent of Mariana's glass angel." 1.1K likes. Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes, Are sparkling to the moon: This is not surprising, given that Keats influenced Tennyson greatly in many of his poems. Hunt's earlier painting probably influenced him, and his triptych is very much in the Pre-Raphaelite style, with the bright colors, great detail, moonlight, and stained glass (C. Wood 52). New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1894. Last year beginning on November 30th, the feast of St. Andrew the Apostle, I prayed the St. Andrew Christmas Novena. These qualities are displayed in their most exquisite form in the vision-scene which quite naturally remains uppermost in the mind. The top of the spine is frayed with minor loss. Scott, Grant F. The Sculpted Word: Keats, Ekphrasis, and the Visual Arts. In terms of its technical aspects, the painting is typical of Millais's later style after he married Effie; now that he had a family to support, he wrote that "he could no longer afford to spend a day painting an area 'no larger than a five shilling piece'"(C. Wood 37), referring to the obsessive detail that characterized the early Pre-Raphaelite works. Hanover NH: University Press of New England, 1994. Keats has a rep for being the least "worldly" of the Romantic poets—he didn't get a fancy education, he didn't have a trust fund to fall back on, and he wasn't sashaying his way through the conti... Tough-o-Meter. Sharma, K.N. Contact Us The Eve of St. Agnes I. ST. AGNES’ Eve - Ah, bitter chill it was! John Keats 2015. [Barlow 77]. They got mystic marriage. He revised the work at Winchester in September; it was first published in 1820. 59, No. Original binding and endpapers. Wood, Christopher. And twilight saints, and dim emblazonings, Mariana, longing for her lover, Angelo, thoroughly sick of her embroidery, and trapped and miserable in her castle, looks out of her window and stretches sensually, emphasizing her body and its sexuality. Though Tennyson was certainly a Victorian, he was not a Pre-Raphaelite and it was the Pre-Raphaelites, especially in the early stages of the movement, who were particularly captivated by the works of Keats (even more so by the works of Tennyson himself; see Holman Hunt's The Lady of Shalott or Millais's h for example). “St Agnes’ Eve” is January 20th, as St Agnes died on January 21st in 304 A.D. This narrative poem is full of supernatural elements which is one of the main features of romanticism. The Eve of St. Agnes is a poem by John Keats, and this quiz/worksheet combo will help you test your understanding of it. However, this novena is actually prayed much longer. Outside the Brotherhood, the most important artist to create a pictorial version of "The Eve of St. Agnes" was Arthur Hughes. The Eve of St. Agnes, XXIII October 31, 2015. by John Keats. http://www.fullbooks.com/The-Early-Poems-of-Alfred-Lord-Tennyson.html. and – Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters. “The Eve of St. Agnes is pure and passionate, surprising by its fine excess in color and melody, sensuous in every line, yet free from the slightest taint of sensuality, is unforgettable and unsurpassable as a dream of first love.” [5] Only recently have critics noted the highly ambiguous character of Porphyro and the dubious qualities of his admittedly passionate love. The Eve of St Agnes has an occurring theme of the supernatural, with references to religion, magic and death throughout. “The Eve of St. Agnes” is one of Keats’s most challenging poems when it comes to the poet’s emotions and beliefs on social structures, life, death, men, and women. Solution? As a painter, he was the most technically talented of the PRB and the most critically acclaimed. But though technical aspects of the art were clearly of great concern to, he does not focus solely on art as his subject matter. The eve of St. Agnes is 20th January and the consecrated day in January 21st. St Agnes Eve has a mystical power when ‘young virgins might have visions of delight’ 47 outside the normal experience where imagination can rise to supernatural heights and penetrate beauty-truth. Barlow concludes, The Eve of St. Agnes . As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings; With a huge empty flagon by his side: The Eve of St Agnes has an occurring theme of the supernatural, with references to religion, magic and death throughout. Make Thou my spirit pure and clear The Victorian Web. "William Morris and Keats." [ll. Victorian Painters 'The Eve of St Agnes' is a long, romantic poem by John Keats. And so St. Agnes eve is January 20th. It is widely considered to be amongst his finest poems and was influential in 19th century literature. St Agnes was a young Roman girl who became a convert to Christianity, and who was persecuted and finally she suffered death for her faith under the emperor Diocletian. Another of his comments on the painting reads, "'In the meanwhile the story in Keats's "Eve of St. Agnes" illustrates the sacredness of honest responsible love and the weakness of proud intemperance, and I may practice my new principles to some degree on that subject'" (Pointon 32). The Eve of St Agnes was written at Chichester and Bedhampton during the last half of January 1819. The use of gothic imagery based on the old folk tale, creates a dark and mysterious atmosphere that could be used to describe the supernatural events that are taking place. Victorian Keats: Manliness, Sexuality, and Desire. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in 1820. . He also notes the importance of color in the poem and how Porphyro becomes associated with warm, dark colors such as vermilion and purple (not surprising, given his name), how Keats describes the couple's consummation scene in terms of melding colors, and lastly argues that Madeline is not associated with any color, thus, he claims, demonstrating that her dream of Porphyro is "positioned outside the material sublime of Keats's writing, as if some part of the poet, siding with Angela, wished to keep it and its heroine 'free from mortal taint'(l. 225)" (95). But, Madeline fears that he would leave her alone. Fifteen hundred years after her death, St. Agnes' Eve would translate itself into one of the richest and most vivid literary and artistic themes in historys. People will fight us this one, but we'd argue that this poem is a 7 pretending to be a 3. Marcia Pointon. As a painter, he was the most technically talented of the PRB and the most critically acclaimed. Watkinson, Raymond. Furthermore, Madeline stares longingly not out the window but at the bed, expressing the wish for a more earthly union as opposed to a spiritual one like the nun wishes for as she stares out at the heavens. The Eve of St. Agnes Summary. Numb were the Beadsman's fingers, while he told 208-216]. His rosary, and while his frosted breath, Keats felt that immortal passion can only be experienced after a life of intensity of experience. Vol. He suddenly thinks of making Madeline’s dream a reality by his presence in her bedroom at midnight. And so St. Agnes eve is January 20th. We do not know what prompted Keats to write "The Eve of St. Agnes", as we have very few comments from him on the poem itself, no less his motivation for writing it (Stillinger 32). Stanza IX Line 5, buttress'd: hiding in the shadows of the buttress, a projecting structure to support the castle. Past the sweet Virgin's picture, while his prayer he saith. "St. Agnes provided a rich source of vibrant and colorful images for these artists, but more importantly, I think, it showed tham that Keats was doing in words what they so desperately wanted to achieve in paint — luxuriating in the texture of the medium itself. Each artist or poet, however, was able to create a highly individual work: Tennyson both humanizes a minor poetical character and adds a religious element to secular love, bringing it to a higher plane; Hunt establishes a moral message through his subject matter and the way he uses pictorial space; Millais aggrandizes romantic-sexual love in the contrasting ways he depicts Tennyson's and Keats's two poems. London: George Weidenfeld and Nicolson Ltd., 1981. 1K likes. Meanwhile, they recruited four other promising young artists (William Michael Rossetti, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and F. G. Stephens) to join them in the Brotherhood. When Madeline, St. Agnes' charmed maid, Rose, like a mission'd spirit, unaware: With silver taper's light, and pious care, She turn'd, and down the aged gossip led To a safe level matting. This interpretation of the picture is probably a function of the time in which Wood created it. After his religious illumination, he turned toward even more explicitly religious subjects and religious symbolism, the most famous of these being The Light of the World and The Shadow of Death. Millais compounds the eroticism with the addition of Madeline's thick, flowing hair and long neck (similar to D.G. The myth of “St Agnes’ Eve” is a story that says that a young girl, or an unmarried woman, will dream of her future husband on the Eve of St Agnes. He requests Angela to help her and also makes her believe that he will do no harm to her. They were fascinated by the theme of romantic love and medieval subjects, and "The Eve of St. Agnes" most definitely provides the first, and while Keats does not expressly set a time period for the poem, the "Knights, ladies" in line 16 and the "carved angels" and cornices in stanza four strongly suggest a medieval castle. The leaves are of good quality and clean, odourless. But his sagacious eye an inmate owns: Our “Mass Transit” mini-bus provides service to our 9:30 a.m. Mass. This idea becomes even more reasonable when one takes into account the fact that the austere Beadsman appears to only be concerned with issues of religious devotion and that Tennyson's poem seems to be much more religious than Keats's -- notice that the scene takes place outside a convent and that the speaker's thoughts are concerned with God and Christ. Please leave your name, address and phone number with the rectory office if you need a ride. This letter was published in 1925 in Amy Lowell's biography, and for Wood, writing before the twentieth century, it would easier to deny erotic implications in either Keats's or Hunt's works. The eve is called the vigil and the day is called the feast. John Everett Millais was a close friend Hunt even before Hunt met Rossetti. Of the paintings, two were painted by members of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (William Holman Hunt and John Everett Millais) and one by a Pre-Raphaelite Associate (Arthur Hughes). The setting is a medieval castle, the time is January 20, the eve of the Feast of St. Agnes. undermines at its conclusion the progressive movement from artifice to reality. On the Grasshopper and Cricket. Modern Love . He did no less than three different works using the St. Agnes' Eve theme, whether taking his inspiration from Tennyson's or Keats's poem. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002. I St. Agnes Eve Ah, bitter chill it was! More importantly for the artistic Pre-Raphaelite movement, it is a highly visual poem. The death of Angela and the Beadsman at the end of the poem shows his abrupt and unfinished ending of the poem. Award winning, natural skincare that helps you to achieve healthy, glowing skin. The first eight lines of each stanza is written in iambic pentameter with the last, known as an “alexandrine” written in iambic hexameter. The chains lie silent on the footworn stones; -- (l. 36) as a representation of a more earthly coupling. Given that Tennyson used typological symbolism in other poems, a religious reading of the poem is perfectly plausible. Stanza X Line 9, beldame: nurse or old woman, hag. It was actually William Holman Hunt's Porphyro during the drunkenness attending the revelry (The Eve of St. Agnes) that was the instigation for bringing the PRB together in 1848. 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