'Merlin's Debt in Keats's "The Eve of St. Agnes', Lines 170-71

This article looks in detail what has long been regarded as a crux of meaning in Keats's 'The Eve of St. Agnes': the last two lines of stanza 19, i.e. lines 170-71: 'Never on such a night have lovers met, / Since Merlin paid his Demon all the monstrous debt'. Early commentators, including Leigh Hunt, admitted to finding the basic meaning of the comparison here baffling, and modern commentators often note the lines as 'puzzling', uncertain, or ambiguous. The article proposes a clear reading of the lines, and begins to trace some of its implications in terms of how we read the poem as a whole