Part 14 (1/2)

Thus we see that the main incident of the story, the murder of Lorenzo, is pa.s.sed over in a line--'Thus was Lorenzo slain and buried in,' the next line, 'There, in that forest, did his great love cease,' bringing us back at once from the physical reality of the murder to the thought of his love, which is to Keats the central fact of the story.

In the delineation of Isabella, her first tender pa.s.sion of love, her agony of apprehension giving way to dull despair, her sudden wakening to a brief period of frenzied action, described in stanzas of incomparable dramatic force, and the 'peace' which followed when she

Forgot the stars, the moon, the sun, And she forgot the blue above the trees, And she forgot the dells where waters run, And she forgot the chilly autumn breeze; She had no knowledge when the day was done, And the new morn she saw not--

culminating in the piteous death 'too lone and incomplete'--in the delineation of all this Keats shows supreme power and insight.

In the conception, too, of the tragic loneliness of Lorenzo's ghost we feel that nothing could be changed, added, or taken away.

Not quite equally happy are the descriptions of the cruel brothers, and of Lorenzo as the young lover. There is a tendency to exaggerate both their inhumanity and his gentleness, for purposes of contrast, which weakens where it would give strength.

_The Eve of St. Agnes_, founded on a popular mediaeval legend, not being a tragedy like _Isabella_, cannot be expected to rival it in depth and intensity; but in every other poetic quality it equals, where it does not surpa.s.s, the former poem.

To be specially noted is the skilful use which Keats here makes of contrast--between the cruel cold without and the warm love within; the palsied age of the Bedesman and Angela, and the eager youth of Porphyro and Madeline; the noise and revel and the hush of Madeline's bedroom, and, as Mr. Colvin has pointed out, in the moonlight which, chill and sepulchral when it strikes elsewhere, to Madeline is as a halo of glory, an angelic light.

A mysterious charm is given to the poem by the way in which Keats endows inanimate things with a sort of half-conscious life. The knights and ladies of stone arouse the bedesman's shuddering sympathy when he thinks of the cold they must be enduring; 'the carven angels' '_star'd_'

'_eager-eyed_' from the roof of the chapel, and the scutcheon in Madeline's window '_blush'd_ with blood of queens and kings'.

Keats's characteristic method of description--the way in which, by his masterly choice of significant detail, he gives us the whole feeling of the situation, is here seen in its perfection. In stanza 1 each line is a picture and each picture contributes to the whole effect of painful chill. The silence of the sheep, the old man's breath visible in the frosty air,--these are things which many people would not notice, but it is such little things that make the whole scene real to us.

There is another method of description, quite as beautiful in its way, which Coleridge adopted with magic effect in _Christabel_. This is to use the power of suggestion, to say very little, but that little of a kind to awaken the reader's imagination and make him complete the picture. For example, we are told of Christabel--

Her gentle limbs did she undress And lay down in her loveliness.

Compare this with stanza xxvi of _The Eve of St. Agnes_.

That Keats was a master of both ways of obtaining a romantic effect is shown by his _La Belle Dame Sans Merci_, considered by some people his masterpiece, where the rich detail of _The Eve of St. Agnes_ is replaced by reserve and suggestion.

As the poem was not included in the volume published in 1820, it is given here.

LA BELLE DAME SANS MERCI.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the Lake And no birds sing.

Oh what can ail thee Knight at arms So haggard, and so woe begone?

The Squirrel's granary is full And the harvest's done.

I see a lily on thy brow With anguish moist and fever dew, And on thy cheeks a fading rose Fast withereth too.

I met a Lady in the Meads Full beautiful, a faery's child, Her hair was long, her foot was light And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head, And bracelets too, and fragrant zone, She look'd at me as she did love And made sweet moan.

I set her on my pacing steed, And nothing else saw all day long, For sidelong would she bend and sing A Faery's song.

She found me roots of relish sweet, And honey wild and manna dew, And sure in language strange she said I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot, And there she wept and sigh'd full sore, And there I shut her wild, wild eyes With kisses four.