"To Sleep"

&

"Why Did I Laugh Tonight? NoVoice Will Tell"

Here, we are going to analyse two poems by the English poet John Keats (1795-1821). Both deal with the topic of “death”.

The first one is called “To Sleep”. It is a sonnet, a variant of the English sonnet -Keats, as a Romantic tried to experiment with the form of the sonnets- and it is composed of fourteen verses with the rhyme structure: ababcdcd bc fgfg. In some parts of the poem we can say it has true rhyme: “midnight”/ “light”; “hoards”/ “wards”; “benign”/ “divine”/ “shine”; “close”/ “throws”/ “woes”; “eyes”/ “charities”; “mole”/ “soul”. Each line contains ten syllables.

As we said before the title of the poem is “To Sleep”, however, not “sleep” as the plain meaning, but as metaphor: it means “die”. Keats interprets that to die is like to fall asleep, a state of unconsciousness.

The poet is talking to the “death”. He treats it as a positive thing, as we can see in the first five verses: “O soft embalmer of the still midnight!/ Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,/ Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,/ Enshaded in forgetfulness divine; O smoothest Sleep!”. Keats uses pleasant and mild words in these verses to express his feelings about the “death”: soft, careful, benign, pleased, divine, smoothest, embalmer. He also finds the element of darkness as a positive element and the light as a negative one (not very common). Then, the poet asks “The Sleep” (=“death”) to come to him: “O smoothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close,/ In midst of this thine hymn, my willing eyes./ Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws/ Around my bed its lulling charities”. He wants “The Sleep” to fall asleep (=to die), he doesn't mind when: while he would sleep (“ In midst of this thine hymn”), or after the priest's absolution (“Or wait the Amen, ere thy poppy throws”). After that, he explains why: “Then save me, or the passed day will shine/ Upon my pillow, breeding many woes;/ Save me from curious conscience, that still hoards/ Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;/ Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,/ And seal the hushed casket of my soul.”. The “key-word” is “SAVE” that he repeats twice, the author needs to be saved of the “life” or state of conscience (we said before “death”= unconsciousness). So, the poets is looking for the death as a liberation. “Life” is an anxiety state.

The second poem is: “Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell”. It is also an English sonnet, but this one without being modified, it has the traditional Shakespearean form: the rhyme scheme contains three quatrains and a couplet. So, the scheme is: abab cdcd efef gg. It has true rhyme because all the sounds at the end of the verse are identical: “tell”/ “Hell”; “response”/ “once”; “pain”/ “vain”; “lease”/ “cease”; “spreads”/ “shreds”; “indeed”/ “meed”. It has ten syllables in each verse.

This poem is about the concept of death for the poet, for his mind and heart. His ignorance and the poet's dilemma of how confront it.

In the first three lines the author says that God and Demon can't tell him why was he “happy” and “optimist” in his life, if he already knew that he would die? There is no one who can answer: “Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell:/ No God, no Demon of severe response,/ Deigns to reply from Heaven or from Hell.”. So, the poet affirms that religion has not the answer. God, who was at the beginning of existence doesn't know the answer, but no demon either. He uses the word “no” many times, that emphasizes what he wants to say, the unanswerable dilemma. In the two following verses asks the same query to his heart: “Then to my human heart I turn at once./ Heart! Thou and I are here, sad and alone;/ I say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain!”. But he has no answer. Both (poet and heart) are sad and alone. The heart represents author's feelings, they cannot explain why he could have been happy if he already know he would die.

Óscar Fernández Adrià

Academic year 2005-06
© a.r.e.a./Dr.Vicente Forés López
© Óscar Fernández Adrià
Universitat de València Press
osfera@alumni.uv.es