The Eve of St. Agnes

[2] 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.

[5] 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.

She has heard 'old 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.

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".

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".

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.