The poem takes place on (as the title would suggest) St. Agnes Eve, a holy day attributed to a Christian saint of chastity and virtue. The night happens on January 20, in the middle of winter. The poem quickly uses several images to immerse the reader not only in the frigid winter setting, but in the era of history. In the first stanza, the speaker highlights the animals suffering the harsh winter and the silence of the farmland. The opening stanza also introduces the Beadsman, a bookend device that opens and closes the poem while also communicating time: A beadsman (a person who is paid to pray for another) was popular prior to the 15th century but no longer existed in Keats’s time (or our own). This shows the reader when the story takes place. The speaker uses language like “Numb were the Beadsman's fingers” (1.5) and “frosted breath” (1.6) to bring the chilly world to life.

The following stanzas introduce juxtaposition of the religious and the artistic, the austere and the passionate. The Beadsman walks through the chapel and acknowledges the statues erected there. The image of cold continues as the sculptures “seem to freeze” (2.