--the word 'blush' makes the colour seem to come and go, while the mind is at the same time sent travelling from the maiden's chamber on thoughts of her lineage and ancestral fame. Observation, I believe, shows that moonlight has not the power to transmit the hues of painted glass as Keats in this celebrated passage represents it. Let us be grateful for the error, if error it is, which has led him to heighten, by these saintly splendours of colour, the sentiment of a scene wherein a voluptuous glow is so exquisitely attempered with chivalrous chastity and awe. When Madeline unclasps her jewels, a weaker poet would have dwelt on their lustre or other visible qualities: Keats puts those aside, and speaks straight to our spirits in an epithet breathing with the very life of the wearer,--'her warmed jewels.' When Porphyro spreads the feast of dainties beside his sleeping mistress, we are made to feel how those ideal and rare sweets of sense surround and minister to her, not only with their own natural richness, but with the associations and the homage of all far countries whence they have been gathered-- "From silken Samarcand to cedar'd Lebanon." If the unique charm of the _Eve of St Agnes_ lies thus in the richness and vitality of the accessory and decorative images, the actions and emotions of the personages are hardly less happily conceived as far as they go. What can be better touched than the figures of the beadsman and the nurse, who live just long enough to share in the wonders of the night, and die quietly of age when their parts are over[55]: especially the debate of old Angela with Porphyro, and her gentle treatment by her mistress on the stair? Madeline is exquisite throughout, but most of all, I think, at two moments: first when she has just entered her chamber,-- "No uttered syllable, or, woe betide: But to her heart, her heart was voluble, Paining with eloquence her balmy side:"-- and afterwards when, awakening, she finds her lover beside her, and contrasts his bodily presence with her dream:-- "'Ah Porphyro!' said she, 'but even now Thy voice was at sweet tremble in mine ear Made tunable with every sweetest vow; And those sad eyes were spiritual and clear; How changed thou art! how pallid, chill, and drear'." Criticism may urge, indeed, that in the 'growing faint' of Porphyro, and in his 'warm unnerved arm,' we have a touch of that swooning abandonment to which Keats's heroes are too subject. But it is the slightest possible; and after all the trait belongs not more to the poet individually than to his time. Lovers in prose romances of that date are constantly overcome in like manner. And we may well pardon Porphyro his weakness, in consideration of the spirit which has led him to his lady's side in defiance of her 'whole bloodthirsty race,' and will bear her safely, this night of happy marvels over, to the home 'beyond the southern moors' that he has prepared for her[56].