Bits of Life 2

F-23 Words-650

In body and soul.”
That, however, doesn’t stop him to come riding over the moors with fire in his heart for Madeline.

“Meantime, across the moors,
Had come young Porphyro, with heart on fire
For Madeline.”

The power of love is not to be defeated by fear or doubt. Here is a young man who knows what he wants and has a goal to win the hand of the lady he loved and is ready to give up his life for union with her.

The action arises at several levels. Like a maestro Keats accomplishes the feat of bringing together of religious ceremonies performed by the devout such as fasting and praying throughout the day and the telling of the rosary on the one hand, and on the other, the drunken revelries, raucous music, feasting and carousing. The contrast between the subdued and the withdrawn atmosphere of Madeline’s chamber and the waves of noise emanating from the lit halls of the castle is well orchestrated. Similar contrast in the mood of different actors should be noted.

The calm but stiff fingered beadsman whose only concern is with the other world.

“The joys of all his life are said and sung:

His was harsh penance on St. Agnes’s Eve:

Another way he went, and soon among

Rough ashes sat he for his soul’s reprieve,

And all night kept awake, for sinners’ sake to grieve.”

Keats is also focusing attention on scanning the class differences existing even at that ancient period of human history. While the castle is well illuminated and warm, Angela the old dame, the beadsman and the mastiff seem cut off from the celebrations and bonhomie of the inmates and were left out in the bitter cold, suffering the misfortunes of the poor and the sick and the serving. Each thought of Keats is punctuated with an image, which renders the whole poem lively and effervescent. Onomatopoeia is used to increase the effectiveness of the auditory image.



Meantime the frost wind blows

Pattering the sharp sleet

Against the window panes.



It is a whirlpool of activity at the physical and at the mind level as we are taken along with Porphyro from on the threshold of the imposing castle into the nooks and corners and curtain shades to look and listen at doors ajar and then to the comfort and warmth of my lady’s chamber and back again into the open sky and chilly wintry darkness and across the moor to ride away into the melting vista of a promising glorious future with the reunited lovers. The whole gamut of events unfold before our mind’s eye so completely and without the slightest of a hesitant note by the effortless employment of befitting word pictures painted by Keats. Delectable images are chosen to suit the thought process.

The season of mists and bitter cold occupy the space of the introductory stanzas of the poem. They also voice the holiness of the event. Imagery is the life and pulse of imagination. Images are used deftly by Keats like landmarks that bring alive a whole world that he had envisaged and succeeded in conveying it to us. The first line at once transports us into the realm of a medieval milieu.
Then we witness Porphyro preparing the table of delicacies for Madeline. From the closet he brings forth heaps of

candied apple, quince and plum and gourd;

With jellies soother than the creamy curd.

And lucent syrops, tinct with cinnamon;

Manna and dates, in argosy transferr’d

From Fez; and spiced dainties, every one

From silken Samarcand to cedard Lebanon.



This particular stanza with an elaborate gustatory image certainly is a part of the setting in which the rest of the events are to take place. Keats brings in an array of fruits ranging in colour from yellow to red to deep blue and in taste from sweet to sour. The texture of