‘The Eve of St. Agnes has been described as a romance of sheer happiness.’ Discuss.

Q. ‘The Eve of St. Agnes has been described as a romance of sheer happiness.’ Discuss.
Or, Consider “The Eve of St. Agnes” as a love poem.
Ans. The Eve of St. Agnes is a remarkable love-poem by John Keats. Keats composed this in January 1819 and revised it in September the same year. His love affair with Isabella brought in temporary relief to his troubled and disturbed mind. And in this happy mood, Keats composed this poem at Chichester. Robert Gatting throws light on the date and circumstances of the composition of the poem. He says “A successful love-affair with Isabella, at the same time, the lovely excitement of the Flairtition with Fanny Brawne, combined the sensuous love atmosphere of the poem, but as the poem went on and the details of its setting began to form in Keats’ mind, another decidedly different lady also took a hand”. The happy atmosphere of Chichester and the love-affair of the poet accelerated the composition of The Eve of St. Agnes.
Keats composed this poem when he was in the best of his spirits. His passion for Fanny Brawne must have been the immediate inspiration for this poem. However, this happy moment did not last long, but then The Eve of St. Agnes, in the expression of his love-lorn feelings. The fever and fret of life which had been tormenting him for quite a number of years were conspicuously absent for a short time during the composition of The Eve of St. Agnes.
This poem owes great appeal in its sensuous element and religious background. The superstitious belief about St. Agnes’s Eve and the bold adventures of Porphyro for Madeline have been described in colourful and decorative language. And that is why, the poem has been called on a long sensuous utterance and a lyrical expression. Assuredly the grandeur of Hyperion and the sober and sensuous ideas of life as expressed in Isabella, Lamia and Endymion are even seen in The Eve of St. Agnes.
Never-the-less the acknowledgement of love and the dream fulfilment have been expressed in an impressive and colourful language. Middleton Murray finds the triumph of love in this poem. He calls it “a poem of opulent and triumphant love. It has the rapture and enchantment, the rich and deep and right sensuousness of complete surrender to the God”. It is, in brief, the day spring of Keats’s passion translated in terms of the poetic imagination. If the crude equation be taken with enough imaginative margin, we may say that Madeline is Fanny and Keats Porphyro. Keats’s love affair with Fanny Brawne has been really translated into poetic imagination. Porphyro’s love passion for Madeline is really the love-craze of Keats for Fanny Brawne. Though the poem celebrates the triumph of love, it sufficiently alerts us against the deception of an illusion of the dream-world. Madeline is deceived in her dream and says “No dream alas and alas and woe is mine”. Keats condemns the dreamers who shut out the world. In the conflict between dream and reality in most of his poems, Keats always accepts the stark realities.,
The Eve of St. Agnes is a passionate poem of love. In it the sensuous aspects of love-making are stressed. The plot of the poem resembles the tragic story of the Shakespeare’s “Romeo and Juliet”. As in Romeo and Juliet the lovers in this poem-Porphyro and Madeline-belong to two hostile families. Porphyro is an adventurous lover. He enters the castle of the Baron, who is Madeline’s father inspite of all the dangers of encounter. Though surrounded by enemies, he quietly steps into Madeline’s bed chamber through the help of Angela, the old woman.

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