The Eve of St. Agnes is a Romantic narrative poem of 42 Spenserian stanzas set in the Middle Ages. It was written by John Keats in 1819 and published in 1820. The poem was considered by many of Keats's contemporaries and the succeeding Victorians to be one of his finest and was influential in 19th-century literature. The title comes from the day (or evening) before the feast of Saint Agnes (or St. Agnes' Eve). St. Agnes, the patron saint of virgins, died a martyr in 4th century Rome. The eve falls on 20 January; the feast day on the 21st. The divinations referred to by Keats in this poem are referred to by John Aubrey in his Miscellanies (1696) as being associated with St. Agnes' night. Background Keats based his poem on the folk belief that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; that is, she would go to bed without any supper, and transfer pins one by one from a pincushion to a sleeve while reciting the Lord’s Prayer. Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream. A Scottish version of the ritual would involve young women meeting together on St. Agnes's Eve at midnight, they would go one by one, into a remote field and throw in some grain, after which they repeated the following rhyme in a prayer to St. Agnes:"Agnes sweet, and Agnes fair, Hither, hither, now repair; Bonny Agnes, let me see The lad who is to marry me." Keats started writing this seminal work while staying in Chichester. He travelled to Chichester, probably arriving on St Agnes’ Day, 20 January 1819. It is said that the medieval architecture of Chichester inspired the great hall and house where Madeline lived. A statue of Keats resides in Eastgate Square in Chichester to commemorate the fact he started this poem there. The statue was unveiled by Chichester-based actress Dame Patricia Routledge. In the original version of his poem, Keats emphasised the young lovers' sexuality, but his publishers, who feared public reaction, forced him to tone down the eroticism. Plot On a bitterly chill night, an elderly beadsman says his prayers in the chapel of the ancestral home of Madeline's family, where a loud party has begun. Madeline pines for the love of Porphyro, sworn enemy to her kin. She has heard 'old