inevitability, setting

• bitter chill'


  chilling and removed beginning- doom
• the owl 'was a-cold', 'the hare limp'd trembling through the frozen grass' and sheep stood 'silent'


  brutality of the cold affecting those built to endure, immediate suffering
• his frosted breath... seem'd taking flight for heaven, without a death'


  first human shown to be vulnerable, harmed by hostile environment, images of death
• numb' fingers, 'meagre' and 'wan', 'aged' and 'poor' as walks beside 'sculptur'd dead' that 'seem to freeze' in chapel


  seemingly acknowledging his imminent death, sense of foreboading
• for aye unsought for slept among his ashes cold'


  end of poem, beadsman=dead, harshly contrasts youth of M+P, reminds readers youth is brief and death is inevitable, frames poem w/ life and death=cycle
• porphyro 'he found him in a little moonlight room pale, lattic'd chill and silent as a tomb'


  sense of entrapment, trapped in their love for one another, can't escape love, or death eventually
• angela 'one old beldame, weak in body and in soul', 'grasp'd his fingers in her palsied hands'


  portrays angela as at death's door, shows how they must all eventually die
• angela the old died palsy-twitch'd, with meagre face deform'


  end of poem, framed by death, as young escape and come of age the old and frail die, inescapable cycle
• whose passing bell may ere the midnight toll'


  mirroring description of beadsman- feeble and serving others, foreshadows her death
• oh leave me not in this eternal woe for if thou diest, my love, i know not where to go'


  sign of her devotion to the ritual, her loss of self/direction without it, like many women of her time lacking independence- from ideals and men
• beside the portal doors buttress'd from the moonlight, stand he'


  porphyro as hidden- from moonlight and madeleine, echoes 'shadows' in 5th stanza
• in the languid moon'


  languid=weak/faint, moon mirroring the mood of situation
• porphyro set table 'where the faded moon made a dim, silver twilight'


  associating madeleine w/ silvery light and the moon
• sharp sleet against window panes;st agnes' moon hath set'


  invasion of the cold, characters plunged into darkness
• tis dark' x2


  repetition by madeline makes her seem dazed and confused, did she consent?
• meantime the frost-wind blows like love's alarum pattering the sharp sleet against the panes'


  cold contrasts hot passion, alarum=alarm signifying invasion of cold
• porphyro will leave me here to fade and pine'


  madelines response to being awake & real porphyro= another dramatic climax, betrayal may be her ruin
• and they are gone: aye, ages long ago'


  reveals story took place in past, purpose= to create suspense + tension to bring story alive, also creates continuity as a universally relevant issue (rape of madeline)
• these lovers fled away into the storm'


  ambiguous ending, number of possibilities
• that night the baron dreamt of many a woe... of witch, and demon, and large coffin-worm'


  adding to uncertainty around M+P's escape, dreaming of terror and death