Bright Star by John Keats A Study of the Sonnet

sound is related to meaning

Sonnet Fundamentally a dialectical construct Examines the nature and ramifications of two usually contrastive ideas, emotions, states of mind, beliefs, actions, events, images, etc. Juxtaposes the two against each other Possibly resolves or just reveals the tensions created and operative between the two.

3 types The Italian (or Petrarchan) Sonnet The Spenserian Octave (a b b a a b b a) Sestet (c d c d c d / c d e c d e / etc.) The Spenserian a b a b / b c b c / c d c d / e e The English (or Shakespearean) a b a b / c d c d / e f e f / g g

"London, 1802" Milton! thou shouldst be living at this hour: England hath need of thee: she is a fen Of stagnant waters: altar, sword, and pen, Fireside, the heroic wealth of hall and bower, Have forfeited their ancient English dower Of inward happiness. We are selfish men; Oh! raise us up, return to us again; And give us manners, virtue, freedom, power. Thy soul was like a Star, and dwelt apart; Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea: Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free, So didst thou travel on life's common way, In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

"Sonnet LIV" Of this World's theatre in which we stay, My love like the Spectator idly sits, Beholding me, that all the pageants play, Disguising diversely my troubled wits. Sometimes I joy when glad occasion fits, And mask in mirth like to a Comedy; Soon after when my joy to sorrow flits, I wail and make my woes a Tragedy. Yet she, beholding me with constant eye, Delights not in my mirth nor rues my smart; But when I laugh, she mocks: and when I cry She laughs and hardens evermore her heart. What then can move her? If nor mirth nor moan, She is no woman, but a senseless stone.

Bright Star Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

Meter = A regular pattern of rhythm Our language naturally has rhythm due to stressed and unstressed syllables. Rhythmic poetry arranges these natural stressed/unstressed syllables into a pattern.

Within Words: person desert Phrases: the wind of trees and cars \ Examples Within Words: person desert Phrases: the wind of trees and cars \

Shall I compare thee to a summer's day Shall I compare thee to a summer's day? Thou art more lovely and more temperate: Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May, And summer's lease hath all too short a date: Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines, And often is his gold complexion dimm'd; And every fair from fair sometime declines, By chance or nature's changing course untrimm'd; But thy eternal summer shall not fade Nor lose possession of that fair thou owest; Nor shall Death brag thou wander'st in his shade, When in eternal lines to time thou growest: So long as men can breathe or eyes can see, So long lives this and this gives life to thee.

Standard Poetic Meters Iambic  light, stressed Anapestic  light, light, stressed Trochaic  stressed, light Dactylic stressed, light, light

Double, double toil and trouble Fire burn, and caldron bubble Double, double toil and trouble Fire burn, and caldron bubble. Fillet of a fenny snake, In the caldron boil and bake. An emerald is as green as grass, A ruby red as blood; A sapphire shines a blue as heaven; A flint lies in the mud. I don’t care who is there and who saw me destroy you So go call you a lawyer, file you a lawsuit I’ll smile in the courtroom and buy you a wardrobe … I don’t mean to be mean but that’s all I can be is just me