THE EVE OF ST. MARK
A FRAGMENT
In a letter to George and Georgiana Keats, dated February 14, 1819, Keats says that he means to send them in the next packet 'The Pot of Basil,' 'St. Agnes' Eve,' and 'if I should have finished it a little thing called "The Eve of St. Mark."' He does not refer to the poem again directly, until writing from Winchester to the same, September 20, when he says: 'The great beauty of poetry is that it makes everything in every place interesting. The palatine Vienna and the abbotine Winchester are equally interesting. Some time since I began a poem called "The Eve of St. Mark," quite in the spirit of town quietude. I think I will give you the sensation of walking about an old country town in a coolish evening. I know not whether I shall ever finish it. I will give it as far as I have gone.' The poem appears never to have been finished, and was published in this fragmentary form in Life, Letters and Literary Remains.
Mr. Forman gives an interesting extract from a letter written him by Mr. Rossetti, which throws a possible light on the origin of the poem. He had been reading Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne, and writes: 'I should think it very conceivable—nay, I will say to myself highly probable and almost certain,—that the "Poem which I have in my head" referred to by Keats at page 106 was none other than the fragmentary "Eve of St. Mark." By the light of the extract, . . . I judge that the heroine—remorseful after trifling with a sick and now absent lover—might make her way to the minster-porch to learn his fate by the spell, and perhaps see his figure enter but not return.' The extract from Keats's letter is as follows: 'If my health would bear it, I could write a Poem which I have in my head, which would be a consolation for people in such a situation as mine. I would show some one in Love as I am, with a person living in such Liberty as you do.'
Upon a Sabbath-day it fell;
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell,
That call'd the folk to evening prayer;
The city streets were clean and fair
From wholesome drench of April rains;
And, on the western window panes,
The chilly sunset faintly told
Of unmatured green valleys cold,
Of the green thorny bloomless hedge,
Of rivers new with spring-tide sedge,10
Of primroses by shelter'd rills,
And daisies on the aguish hills.
Twice holy was the Sabbath-bell:
The silent streets were crowded well
With staid and pious companies,
Warm from their fireside orat'ries;
And moving, with demurest air,
To even-song, and vesper prayer.
Each arched porch, and entry low,
Was fill'd with patient folk and slow,20
With whispers hush, and shuffling feet,
While play'd the organ loud and sweet.
The bells had ceased, the prayers begun,
And Bertha had not yet half done
A curious volume, patch'd and torn,
That all day long, from earliest morn,
Had taken captive her two eyes,
Among its golden broideries;
Perplex'd her with a thousand things,—
The stars of Heaven, and angels' wings,30
Martyrs in a fiery blaze,
Azure saints and silver rays,
Moses' breastplate, and the seven
Candlesticks John saw in Heaven,
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