The Eve Of St. Agnes

Question 1

‘bitter chill’

Answer 1

Inevitability/setting

Question 2

The owl, despite his feathers, ‘was a-cold’. ‘The hare limp’d trembling through the
frozen grass’ and the sheep stand ‘silent’

Answer 2

Inevitability/setting:

Question 3

‘His frosted breath…seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death’

Answer 3

Inevitability/setting:

Question 4

The beadsman’s fingers are ‘numb’; he is ‘meagre’ and ‘wan’ (12, ‘aged’ and’ poor’ (21)
and, as he walks beside the ‘sculptur’d dead’ in the chapel, the statues ‘seem to freeze’,
as if acknowledging his imminent death.

Answer 4

Inevitability/setting:

Question 5

At the end: ‘For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold’

Answer 5

Inevitability/setting:

Question 6

Porphyro ‘found him in a little moonlight room/Pale, lattic’d, chill and silent as a tomb’

Answer 6

Inevitability/setting:

Question 7

Angela is ‘one old beldame, weak in body and in soul’

Answer 7

Inevitability/setting:

Question 8

grasp’d his fingers in her palsied hand’

Answer 8

Inevitability/setting:

Question 9

at the end, ‘Angela the old/Died palsy-twitch’d, with meagre face deform’

Answer 9

Inevitability/setting:

Question 10

She says her passing bell may ere the midnight toll’

Answer 10

Inevitability/setting:

Question 11

‘Mercy, Porphyro! Hie thee from this place’ (98)

Answer 11

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 12

Get hence! Get hence!’; ‘Flit like a ghost away’ (105)

Answer 12

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 13

‘Ah, Gossip dear/We’re safe enough’ (105,106)

Answer 13

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 14

‘Ah! It is St. Agnes’ Eve-/Yet men will murder upon holy days’ (118)

Answer 14

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 15

‘Into her dream he melted, as the rose/Blendeth its odour with the violet’ (320-321) – Porphyro tells her, ‘This is no dream…’Tis dark’ (326-327) and this is juxtaposed with the ‘iced gusts’ that ‘still rave and beat’ ominously.

Answer 15

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 16

Madeline is‘full of this whim’ (55); ‘her maiden eyes divine’ are ‘Fix’d on the floor’ (58);
‘she panted all akin/To spirits of the air, and visions wide’ (201,202)

Answer 16

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 17

Porphyro’s passion: ‘his eyes grew brilliant, when she told/His lady’s purpose’ (132-133);
‘Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose/Flushing his brow, and in his pained
heart/Made purple riot’ at the thought of his ‘stratagem’ (136-139)

Answer 17

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris

Question 18

‘Never on such a night have lovers met, / Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt’ (the alexandrine!). (170-171)

Answer 18

Error of judgement/hubris/fatal flaw – passion, entrapment in legend, malevolent force, hubris