in drear nighted december

Question 1

‘in drear nighted december’

Answer 1

elongated vowels - slows pace

sombre tone

alliteration

Question 2

‘too happy, happy tree’

Answer 2

intensifier

tree represents happiness

Question 3

‘thy branches ne’er remember’

Answer 3

humans yearn for oblivion when remembering and losing something

innocence and purity of nature - childlike

without consciousness - no pain

Question 4

‘green felicity’

Answer 4

the world’s seasons do not coincide with the heart’s seasons

Question 5

‘the north cannot undo them with a sleety whistle’

Answer 5

keats envies the power of nature to come back from the dead - we can’t

sibilance

harshness of winter

Question 6

‘nor frozen thawings glue them’

Answer 6

spring will inevitably come

cyclical nature

abab rhyme scheme

Question 7

‘sweet forgetting’

Answer 7

oxymoron

forgetting in most circumstances isn’t sweet

Question 8

‘crystal fretting’

Answer 8

never worried about stopping

Question 9

‘a gentle girl and boy’

Answer 9

the difficulties of being human - we have emotions

learn from experience

Question 10

‘writhed not at passed joy? the feel of not to feel it’

Answer 10

inescapable

because of reflection and memory, humans writhe in pain at joy’s passing

Question 11

‘none to heal it’

Answer 11

human’s aren’t built like nature

Question 12

‘nor numbed sense to steel it’

Answer 12

we can’t harden ourselves to pain

Question 13

structure

Answer 13

2 stanzas - superiority of nature

recurrent rhyme scheme - unbreaking cycle of both nature and human emotional reaction

Question 14

headlines

Answer 14

the superiority of nature

humans will always have an emotional connection to the past

nature will forever fulfil its cycle

nature lacks capacity for empathy

human emotions do not freeze in times of hardship

we can’t relive the past

human emotions cannot be ordered

the pain of memory