St Agnes was one of great Roman virgins and a martyr during reign of Diocletian in the early 4th century. She was condemned to sin in public brothel and was then executed. It is held that her virginity was then preserved by great thunder and lightning which stroke from Heaven during her death. A week after her death, her parents went her tomb and they were greeted by choruses of angels, with Agnes herself among them. The Eve of St Agnes first was written at Bedhampton and Chichester in the last January 1819. Possibly, Keats was then inspired by this calendar that St Agnes’s celebrations are held on 21 January. He decided to revise the work done by Winchester in the September and later published it in 1820. It is under this plot that the poem…show more content… Like in the chapel, there are statues here, but instead of the cold, dead, praying ancestors of the chapel, these are much more lively, "ever eager-eyed" angels, staring down ("Star'd" here is a poetic way of writing "stared") and carved with their hair blown back. As you probably figured, the angels aren't actually staring and the music isn't actually "chiding" (teasing or correcting)—that's just Keats throwing down some handy-dandy anthropomorphism. While anthropomorphism generally just means "non-human things doing human stuff," here you specifically have artistic creations taking on human agency.
We in any event our Beadsman is very brave, now: as he leaves the sanctuary o' unpleasant statues, he's welcomed with music—Music, really—which has a brilliant tongue. (Music doesn't generally have a tongue obviously, so we get more embodiments here.) After the sub zero, noiseless church with its "dark, purgatorial rails," brilliant tongues sound truly great to…show more content… As you presumably figured, the heavenly attendants aren't really gazing and the music isn't really "rebuking" (prodding or rectifying) — that is simply Keats tossing down some helpful dandy humanoid attribution. While humanoid attribution by and large just signifies "non-human things doing human stuff," here you particularly have aesthetic manifestations going up against human
