The Eve Of Saint Mark John Keats Analysis

Though the poem “The Eve of Saint Mark” by John Keats is a fragment, it still allows for multiple interpretations. Initially, the reader may reasonably assume that the poem is strictly about a religious occasion, given the title and the character of Bertha’s interest in a book about saints, but certain details in the poem, as well as the author’s own writing reveal that this is not the case. “The Eve of Saint Mark” uses a religious date specifically associated with folklore to explore the tension between religion and superstition.
The poem reveals its theme of religious and superstitious tension from the beginning though the title and occasion that Keats chose. St. Mark’s Eve is traditionally associated with the dead. On its date, the 24th of April, it was believed that if an individual chose to go to the churchyard, they would see the ghosts of the people that were fated to die that year (St Mark’s Eve). However, the poem does not necessarily begin in a way that would make the reader assume that the narrative with follow any of these superstitions. It begins mentioning the “Sabbath-day”, and describes how the bell “call’d the folk to evening prayer”. But these descriptions do not mean that the rest

The narrator tells the reader that, “Again she try'd, and then again/Until the dusk eve left her dark/Upon the legend of St. Mark”. Bertha’s focus throughout the night is still not on the stories of saints. She is not concerned or moved by the stories she reads, but rather spends the night waiting for something--the legend of St. Mark, this legend presumably being the idea that a person could see the ghosts of the soon-to-be-dead on St. Mark’s Eve. Through the focus of the character remaining on superstition and not the saint behind the holiday or the saintly book in general, Keats shows how humanity’s natural inclination to superstition and folk belief pulls against established