Keats: 'In drear-nighted December'

Question 1

Structure

Answer 1

• Keats’ own invention
• Lines of Iambic Titmeter- ‘feminine’ endings (sorrowful nature of poem)

ABABCCCD
ABABCCCD
ABABCCCD
Three octave stanzas (8 lines per stanza)

Question 2

First stanza

In drear nighted December
Too happy, happy tree
Thy Branches ne’er remember
Their green felicity:
The north cannot undo them
With a sleety whistle through them
Nor frozen thawings glew them
From budding at the prime.

Answer 2

• “drear-nighted December”- Long vowel sounds, mimicking the dragging feeling of winter. alliteration of ‘d’- dread
• “happy, happy tree”- Juxtaposes previous line. Epizeuxis = ‘forced’ nature + personification of the tree. LINK to Romantics & world
• CCC rhyme- repetitive & cyclical nature of seasons + inevitability.
• “sleety whistle” sibilance + appealing to the senses: immersion.
• CD rhyme- cyclical nature winter / summer, suffering to understand happiness

Question 3

Second stanza

In drear nighted December
Too happy happy Brook
Thy bubblings ne’er remember
Apollo’s Summer look;
But with a sweet forgetting
They stay their crystal fretting
Never never petting
About the frozen time.

Answer 3

• Repetition of the stanza entry: cycical seasons
• “Apollo”- Greek god of truth, healing, and light.
• “sweet forgetting”- Typically oxymoronic BUT negative capability.

Question 4

Third stanza

Ah! would ‘twere so with many
A gentle girl and boy!
But were there ever any
Writh’d not of passed joy?
The feel of not to feel it,
When there is none to heal it,
Nor numbed sense to steel it,
Was never said in rhyme.

Answer 4

Different start to stanza- humans are different to nature
- “the feel of not to feel it”- negative capability + ‘feminine’ ending (extra unstressed syllable at end of line)- emphasises emotional pain.
- CCC feeling more aware of joy (past/present) when suffering.

Question 5

Context

Answer 5

1817
- Brother (Tom) was ill with TB, poem was written in Devon where they spent the winter hpoing to improve Tom’s health.