The Eve of St. Agnes Lies and Deceit Quotes

These lines are referencing one of the nastier episodes of ancient mythology (and that's saying something). The "tongueless nightingale" refers to Philomel, a woman who was raped by her brother-in-law Tereus, who then cut out her tongue to prevent her from reporting his crime. There's good evidence to suggest that Madeline and Porphyro have sex in stanza 36, and plenty of critics interpret it as a rape, given Keats's emphasis on Porphyro's artifice and name-dropping of a famous mythological rape.

Like many women before her, Madeline is facing the harsh truth that the man of your dreams is better than the man of your reality. She's woken up from her "wakeful swoon" and found that the real-life version of Porphyro doesn't exactly measure up to the one she was envisioning. At the moment when Madeline joins the land of the living, Porphyro, who's been consistently described as hot and fire-y, is rendered "pallid, chill, and drear." Madeline echoes Angela, who earlier said to Porphyro, "Thou canst not surely be the same that thou didst seem" (144).

Porphyro's just told Madeline that she's not dreaming, and she's not taking the news too well. She feels as though she's been tricked, and actually uses herself some of the language that's been used before by other people to describe her. Madeline says she's been "deceived," as did Angela in stanza 14, and describes herself as a vulnerable dove, as did the speaker in stanza 22. Angela, though, thought that Madeline was being "deceived" because she was buying into this hokey ritual that Angela didn't think was going to work. Here, Madeline thinks she's been "deceived" specifically by Porphyro.