dames full many times declare' that she may receive sweet dreams of her lover if, on this night, St. Agnes' Eve, she retires to bed following the proper rituals. Later that night, Porphyro makes his way to the castle and braves entry, seeking out Angela, an elderly woman friendly to his family, and importuning her to lead him to Madeline's room at night, where he may but gaze upon her sleeping form. Angela is persuaded only with difficulty, and first obtains some food from the banquet for them. Concealed in an ornate, carved closet in Madeline's room, Porphyro watches as Madeline makes ready for bed. He creeps forth as she sleeps, to prepare a feast of rare delicacies. Madeline wakes and sees before her the same image she has seen in her dream and, thinking Porphyro part of it, receives him into her bed. Waking in full and realising her mistake, she tells Porphyro she cannot hate him for his deception since her heart is so much in his, but that if he goes now he leaves behind "A dove forlorn and lost / With sick unpruned wing". Porphyro declares his love for Madeline and promises her a home with him over the southern moors. They flee from the castle, passing insensate, drunken revellers and rush into the night. Angela's death is revealed in the poem's final stanza and the beadsman, "after thousand aves told, / For aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold". Commentary Written in the Gothic style, the poem reflects "...many of the same concerns that Keats explores in his odes--imagination, dreaming and vision, and life as a mixture of opposites." In it, Keats blends a medieval legend with a tale of star-crossed lovers, such as Romeo and Juliet and the traditional French romance Floris and Blancheflour. Alluded to by others Rudyard Kipling's short story "Wireless" (1902) has the narrator witnessing a recreation of the poem by a man in a trance who, by virtue of the similarities of his situation to that of Keats (he is a consumptive apothecary's assistant), becomes "tuned" to the poet. H.P. Lovecraft's short story "The Outsider" features the final stanza of the poem as an epigraph. Harry Clarke's The Eve of St. Agnes is a stained glass masterpiece inspired by the poem. References External links 'St. Agnes Eve', Text of 'St. Agnes' Eve' by Keats from Bartleby. The Eve of