'In drear nighted December'

anadiplosis

repetition at the END and then BEGINNING of clauses

In drear nighted December is written in…

iambic tetrameter

in drear nighted December summary:

• dramatizes the constancy of things in nature → a tree, and a brook → while showing how differently the human heart behaves

• we can only learn so much from nature!

• winter = grief + stillness

• nature v human consciousness

• paradox of feeling v not feeling → a philosophical tension

• nature = Stoic, but Keats cannot fully commit to this Stoic model. His imagination is bound up in feeling deeply, even at the cost of pain

• built around the juxtaposition between winter + summer, and then humanity + nature

the first 2 stanzas in Drear nighted December are…

homostrophic

s3 begins with a trochaic foot, inverting the poem’s metre to represent the unpredictability of human folly

“was never said in rhyme” meaning

poetry never writes about being emotionless. The human heart may be unpredictable, explosive, and mercurial, but at least is subject for poetry.

Persephone myth + winter as grief:

Ovid → Metamorphoses (Book 5) → Persephone’s descent into the underworld causes Demeter’s grief, producing winter as a barren + mourning season

Shakespeare, Sonnet 97:

“How like a winter hath my absence been”

“the feel of not to feel it”

sensation and its negation fold back on each other - in a near-chiasmic effect - antanaclasis

Cymbeline (1610) , In drear nighted December

“golden lads and girls” in “a gentle girl and boy”

a song sung in Cymbeline around a grave by Guiderius and Arviragus → the children live, but they won’t live forever!