"What we have is a charming fragment of romantic self indulgence in medieval atmosphere, free of the narrative particularity enforced in 'The Eve of St Agnes'," Discuss Brian Stone's comments on Keats's two 'Eve' poems.

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What we have is a charming fragment of romantic self indulgence in medieval atmosphere, free of the narrative particularity enforced in ‘The Eve of St Agnes’,” Discuss Brian Stone’s comments on Keats’s two ‘Eve’ poems.

From reading the title we can see that Brian Stone believes that ‘The Eve of St Mark’ is charming. Obviously, it is up to the reader to decide but I would not personally use ‘charming’ to describe the poem. However I can see the reasons why Brian Stone could think this. The poem is in octosyllabic couplets of 137 lines. Sixteen lines (101-16), in Middle English. The poem has a beautiful rhyme throughout which is very delightful and it makes you want to carry on reading it. There is also a lot of excellent imagery. “Of the green thorny bloomless hedge, Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge.” (L9-10) These two lines show the wonderful rhyme and imagery that Keats uses.

  I found that by the poem not being finished it frustrated me. This is probably why Brian Stone describes the poem as a ‘fragment’ because it is not complete. When a lot of people read a poem or book they want to get to the ending and find out what happens. The readers cannot do this in ‘The Eve of St Mark’ because Keats did not finish it. This is one of the reasons why I did not thoroughly enjoy the poem. Another factor that made me dislike the poem was the part in Middle English. I found this part harder to read and to understand unlike the rest of the poem.

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  Brian Stones’ second main comment is that the poem is of ‘romantic self indulgence.’ I think Brain Stone means this in a good way. Keats indulges in the traits of the Romantics; individuality, idealism, imagination, innocence and inspiration. Keats gets his inspiration for the poem from Chichester and his time there with Isobella Jones. I know this through various letters Keats wrote and because of other background knowledge. Keats also indulges in some of his imagery and ideas. We see that in the poem there is a lot of imagery about things around Bertha like the town she is ...

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