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Caught Of Sunshine Allusion

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Death is terrifying. This is the argument made by John Keats in his poem “A Draught of Sunshine,” in which he details the inevitable string of emotions which every man must experience on his deathbed. Keats uses a combination of religious allusion, ironic imagery, and an anxious tone to convey this message.
Without the speaker’s religious allusions, the reader would have a difficult time recognizing the speaker’s fate in the poem – death. Only when the speaker mentions the “glory and grace of Apollo” and that “to thee my soul is flown” does it become clear that he is speaking about his own passing. “It is an awful mission,” the speaker says, relating his fear of death to the reader as he asks the “God of Song” to “bearest me along,” helping him on his way to death. …show more content…

Ironically, the narrator precedes his description of death with a painting of other bright, airy pictures in the reader’s mind – his “bowl is the sky,” he drinks “at my eye,” he sits upon “the green of the hill” and drinks in “golden sunshine.” The latter quote connects back to the title, “A Draught of Sunshine,” while also serving as one of the most vivid pieces of imagery in the poem. Abruptly, however, the speaker switches to a more morbid topic, stating that “to thee my soul is flown, and my body is earthward press’d,” in short telling us that he is dying. Juxtaposed with the clean spring and summer imagery, the idea of death almost seems acceptable. In fact, the speaker’s tone in the first half of the poem seems almost happy for death. “My wine overbrims a whole summer,” he says, as if he is boasting about the superiority of his wine, death, over the other, “earthly,” wines, which only put people in a temporary

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