St. Agnes’ Eve.
In Keats’s St. Agnes’ Eve nothing is white but the heroine. It is winter, and ‘bitter chill’; the hare ‘limps trembling through the frozen grass; the owl is a-cold for all his feathers; the beadsman’s fingers are numb, his breath is frosted; and at an instant of special and peculiar romance
‘The frost-wind blows
Like Love’s alarum, pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes.’
But there is no snow. The picture is pure colour: it blushes with blood of queens and kings; it glows with ‘splendid dyes,’ like the ‘tiger-moth’s deep-damasked wings’—with ‘rose bloom,’ and warm gules,’ and ‘soft amethyst’; it is loud with music and luxurious with ‘spiced dainties,’ with lucent syrops tinct with cinnamon,’ with ‘manna and dates,’ the fruitage of Fez and ‘cedared Lebanon’ and ‘silken Samarcand.’ Now, the Laureate’s St. Agnes’ Eve is an ecstasy of colourless perfection. The snows sparkle on the convent roof; the ‘first snowdrop’ vies with St. Agnes’ virgin bosom; the moon shines an ‘argent round’ in the ‘frosty skies’; and in a transport of purity the lady prays:
‘Break up thy heavens, O Lord! and far,
Through all the starlight keen,
Draw me thy bride, a glittering star,
In raiment white and clean.’
It is all coldly, miraculously stainless: as somebody has said, ‘la vraie Symphonie en Blanc Majeur.’