The Eve of St. Agnes

It is a work of almost pure fantasy, redolent of an imagination so luxurious that it seems to transcend the straitened circumstances and conservatism of the early Irish Free State. It is, both literally and in terms of its joyous defiance of oppressive realities, gloriously escapist. The windows smaller, more domestic scale brought out Clarke’s astonishing ability to draw the most finicky and precise detail out of a very difficult medium. His process involved precise etching on to layers of glass, which were then fitted into a cumbersome lead armature.  Keats’s poem is vibrant in its invocation of colors, especially reds, purples and blues, and indeed of moonlight filtered through a stained-glass window, and Clarke was clearly drawn to its visual energy. Keats’s tale of elopement is made all the more powerful through the contrasts between the jewel-like comforts of the palace where the heroine sleeps and the frozen wastes outside, to which she and her lover must flee. Clarke’s glittering blues and jagged, pointed forms confirm that their elopement will have a cold and tragic end. 

The Eve of St Agnes window is based on a romantic narrative poem set in the Middle Ages. The poem was written by John Keats in 1819.  Keats based his poem on the folk belief that a girl could see her future husband in a dream if she performed certain rites on the eve of St. Agnes; that is, she would go to bed without any supper, and transfer pins one by one from a pincushion to a sleeve while reciting the Lord’s Prayer.  Then the proposed husband would appear in her dream.

Agnes of Rome (c. 291 – c.  304) is a virgin martyr, venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church, Oriental Orthodox Church and the Eastern Orthodox Church, as well as the Anglican Communion and Lutheran Churches.[2] She is one of several virgin martyrs commemorated by name in the Canon of the Mass, and one of many Christians martyred during the reign of the Roman emperor Diocletian.