The Eve of St. Agnes

“The Eve of St. Agnes” is a narrative poem by Romantic-era poet John Keats. The name comes from the Christian holy day of St. Agnes, on which a young woman could perform certain divinations to dream of her future husband. The poem uses archaic imagery and form to create a sense of immersion in the Middle Ages. It was written in 1819, shortly before Keats’s death, and went on to inspire several artistic works in various mediums.

Citation Note: The first number in each in-text citation refers to the stanza from which the quote is taken. The numbers after the period indicate the line number. For example, (2.9) refers to the 9th line in the 2nd Stanza.

Poet Biography

Though Keats was only 25 years old when he died, he became a renowned English poet from the second-generation Romantic era, a movement also associated with poets like Percy Bysshe Shelley and Lord Byron. While Keats’s work has had a measurable impact on the English literary canon, his poetry was only actively published for approximately four years before he died from tuberculosis.

Keats was born in London in 1795. Despite his parents’ wishes that he attend a prestigious school like Eton, their financial circumstances meant that Keats had to attend a smaller, more progressive school in Enfield.