But the question of sources is one for the special student, and its discussion may easily tire the lay reader. Passing to the poem and its qualities, we have to note first that, fresh from treading, in his _Hyperion_ attempt, in the path of Milton, Keats in _The Eve of St Agnes_ went back, so far as his manner is derivative at all, to the example of his first master, Spenser. He shows as perfect a command of the Spenserian stanza, with its 'sweet-slipping movement,' as Spenser himself, and as subtle a sense as his of the leisurely meditative pace imposed upon the metre by the lingering Alexandrine at the close. Narrating at this pace and in this mood, he is able at any moment with the lightest of touches to launch the imagination to music on a voyage beyond the beyonds, and to charge every line, every word almost, with a richness and fullness of far-away suggestion that yet never clogs the easy harmonious flow of the verse. At the same time he does not, in this new poem, attempt anything like the depth of human passion and pathos which he had touched in Isabella, and his personages appeal to us in the manner strictly defined as 'romantic,' that is to say not so much humanly and in themselves as by the circumstances, scenery, and atmosphere amidst which they move. In handling these Keats's method is the reverse of that by which some writers vainly endeavour to rival in literature the effects of the painter and sculptor. He never writes for the eye merely, but vivifies everything he touches, telling even of dead and senseless things in terms of life, movement, and feeling. From the opening stanza, which makes us feel the chill of the season to our bones,--telling us first of its effect on the wild and tame creatures of wood and field, and next how the frozen breath of the old beadsman in the chapel aisle 'seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death,'--from thence to the close, where the lovers disappear into the night, the poetry throbs in every line with the life of imagination and beauty. The monuments in the aisle are brought before us, not by any effort of description, but solely through our sympathy with the shivering fancy of the beadsman:-- Knights, ladies, praying in dumb orat'ries, He passeth by; and his weak spirit fails To think how they may ache in icy hoods and mails. Even into the sculptured heads of the corbels supporting the banquet-hall roof the poet strikes life:-- The carved angels, ever eager-eyed, Stared, where upon their heads the cornice rests, With wings blown back, and hands put cross-wise on their breasts.[8] The painted panes in the chamber window, instead of trying to pick out their beauties in detail, he calls-- Innumerable of stains and splendid dyes As are the tiger-moth's deep-damask'd wings,--