The Eve of St Agnes Flashcards
Imagery of lifelessness in initial setting, creating a sense of inevitability of death
‘St Agnes’ Eve-Ah, bitter chill it was!’
‘Silent was the flock’
Religious imagery
‘Past the sweet virgins picture, while his prayer he/ saith’
‘Patient holy man’
Foreshadowing of the beadsman’s demise, creating a sense of lifelessness
‘agèd man’
‘ancient beadsman’
‘already had his deathbell rung’
The tradition of St Agnes eve
‘upon St Agnes’ Eve/ Young virgins might have visions of delight/ And soft adorning from their loves recieve’
Madelines purity, innocence
‘Full of this whim was thoughtful Madeline’
‘She sighed for Agnes’ dreams’
‘yearning like a God in pain’
‘her maiden eyes divine’
Porphyro’s hamartia; youthful passion
‘Young Porphyro, with heart on fire/ For Madeline’
‘Sudden a thought came like a full-blown rose/ Flushing his brow. and in his pained heart,/Made purple riot’
‘burning Porphyro’
Condemning conservative ethics; anthropomorphic descriptions of the family
‘For him, those chambers held barbarian hordes,/ Hyena foemen, and hot-blooded lords’… ‘Against his lineage’
‘Not one breast affords/ Him any mercy, in that mansion foul’
Angela: ‘Mercy Porphyro! Hie thee from this place: They are all here to-night, the whole blood-thirsty race!’
Porphyro’s ‘foemen’ are ‘more fanged than/ Wolves and bears’
Descriptions of Angela
‘Save one old Beldame, weak in body and soul’, ‘palsied hand’
‘A poor, weak, palsy-stricken, churchyard thing,/ Whose passing-bell may ere the midnight toll’
‘For I am slow and feeble’
Angela is unwittingly prophetic
‘Flit like a ghost away’
Porphyro’s hubristic nature
‘Ah, gossip dear,/ We’re safe enough; here in this arm-chair sit’
Deathly imagery pervades…
‘Brushing the cobwebs with his lofty plume’
‘Silent as a tomb’
‘Yet men will murder upon holy days’
Porphyro’s affection for Madeline
‘I will not harm her, by all saints I swear’
‘My weak voice shall whisper its last prayer/ If one of her soft ringlets I displace’
(after encounter)
‘This is no dark dream, my bride, my Madeline!’
‘My Madeline! Sweet dreamer! lovely bride!’
Angela’s initial opposition to Porphyro’s plan
‘A cruel man and impious thou art: Sweet lady, let her pray, and sleep, and dream/ Alone with her good angels, far apart/ From wicked men like thee’
The plot
‘Angela gives promise she will do/ Whatever he shall wish, betide her weal or woe’
‘Which was to lead him, in close secrecy,/ Even to Madeline’s chamber, and there hide/ Him in a closet’
‘That he might see her beauty unespied/ And win perhaps that night a fearless bride’
‘Never on such a night have lovers met,/ Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt’
Descriptions of Madeline in her bedroom
‘The Maidens chamber, silken, hushed and chaste’
‘she knelt for heavens grace and boon’
‘silver cross’
‘she seemed a splendid angel’
‘of all her wreathèd pearls her hair she frees’, ‘warmèd jewels’, ‘rich attire’
Madeline’s association with bird imagery- cf. Isabella
‘trembling in her soft and chilly nest’
‘A dove forlorn and lost with sick unprunèd thing’
Porphyro’s voyerism
‘Porphyro gazed upon her empty dress,/ And listened to her breathing’… ‘And breathed himself’
‘tween the curtains peeped’
The feast
‘Then by the bedside, where the faded moon/ Made a dim, silver twilight, soft he set a table’
‘Threw thereon/ A cloth of woven crimson, gold and jet;’
‘golden dishes’, ‘baskets bright/ of wreathèd silver’
Porphyro tells Madeline to awake
‘And now my love, my seraph fair awake!/ Thou art my heaven’
Madeline’s awakening
‘she uttered a soft moan; He ceased- she panted quick- and suddenly/ Her blue affrayèd eyes wide open shone’
‘Her eyes were open but still she beheld,/ Now wide awake, the vision of her sleep’
Love in the fantastical, versus reality; the contrast between Madeline’s dream and Porphyro in reality
‘There was a painful change, that high expelled/ The blisses of her dream so pure and deep.’
‘At which fair Madeline began to weep,/ And moan forth witless works with many a sigh.’
‘Ah Porphyro! How changed thou art! How pallid, chill and drear!’
Madeline’s desire for Porphyro
‘Oh leave me not in this eternal woe,/ For if thou Diest, my love, I know not where to go.’
‘I curse not, for my heart is lost in thine’
Sexual imagery
‘Beyond a mortal man impassioned far’, ‘he arose,/ Ethereal, flushed and like a throbbing star’
‘Into her dream he melted, as the rose/ Blendeth its odour with the violet–/ Solution sweet’
Porphyro’s quest
‘After so many hours of toil and quest,/ A famished pilgrim- saved by miracle’
Porphyro and Madeline flee
‘Hark! tis an elfin-storm from faery land’
Porphyro: ‘Let us away, my love, with happy seed’
‘She hurried at his words, beset with fears,/ For there were sleeping dragons all around/ At glaring watch perhaps, with ready spears’
Prophetic imagery of death
‘They glide, like phantoms, into the wide hall;/ Like phantoms’
‘These lovers fled away into the storm’
‘That night the Baron dreamt of many a woe’
‘Angela the old/ Died palsy-twitched, with meagre face deform’
‘The Beadsman’…‘slept among his ashes cold’
