Keats and Frost AP Literature Essay Prompt




AP English Literature and Composition
Free-Response Questions

suggested time—40 minutes.
This question counts as one-third of the total essay-section score.

Read the following two poems very carefully, noting that the second includes an allusion to the first. Then write a well-organized essay in which you discuss their similarities and differences. In your essay, be sure to consider both theme and style.



I. Bright Star by John Keats

Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art --
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite*
The moving waters at their priest-like 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 steadfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed 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.  
                                    —John Keats
*hermit


II. Choose Something Like a Star by Robert Frost

        O Star (the fairest one in sight),
        We grant your loftiness the right
        To some obscurity of cloud --
        It will not do to say of night,
(5)   Since dark is what brings out your light.
        Some mystery becomes the proud.
        But to be wholly taciturn
        In your reserve is not allowed.
        Say something to us we can learn
(10) By heart and when alone repeat. 
        Say something! And it says, ‘I burn.’
        But say with what degree of heat.
        Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
        Use Language we can comprehend.
(15) Tell us what elements you blend.
        It gives us strangely little aid,
        But does tell something in the end.
        And steadfast as Keats’ Eremite,
        Not even stooping from its sphere,

(20)  It asks a little of us here.
        It asks of us a certain height,
        So when at times the mob is swayed
        To carry praise or blame too far,
        We may choose something like a star
        To stay our minds on and be staid.
—Robert Frost*


 


Sample Free-Response Student Essay #1

Keats “Bright Star” and Frost’s “Choose Something Like a Star” although similar in their address to a star differ in form, tone and theme. The latter contains an illusion to the former which brings Keats’ themes into the poem. In order to compare these poems it is necessary to look carefully at their themes and constructions. “Bright Star” is a sonnet in traditional iambic pentameter. Its tone is elegiac as it celebrates the woman’s beauty and his love for her in his plea for steadfastness. The poem opens with an apostrophe to the star which calls our attention to his plea. The verbs “would” and “were” indicate his wish to be like the star whom he addresses as “thou.” The star is “hung” in the night, a pleasant image, and he uses a simile to compare it with Eremite, a hermit, who presumably sat apart from the world watching. The eyelids of this star (the star is given anthropomorphic qualities) are eternally apart -- always watching, “patiently” and “sleeplessly.” Keats then enumerates what this star watches. It watches water -- which is also steadfast as indicated by the comparison “priest-like.” The waters that surround the land Keats says are performing ablutions or cleansings and blessings on the land. The star also gazes upon the snow. He uses the metaphor of snow as a “mask” (more personification) as it hides the mountains and moors. The “m” alliteration emphasizes the falling of the snow. The repetition of “of” underlines the parallel structure and idea of the two scenes the star regards. The rhythm of this 2nd quatrain is slow and peaceful like the scene. Then Keats puts a “No -- “ which interrupts this peaceful rhythm; he does not want to look at pastoral scenery but at his lover. The “still steadfast, still unchangeable” emphasizes the fact that this constancy is similar to that of the star regarding the earth. The poet wishes to be lying on his lover’s breast which he implies is like a pillow and describes as “ripening” which emphasizes her fertility. Line 11 has a rhythm of a “fall and swell” like her breathing. He will be in a state of “unrest”, yet a happy one. The repetition of “still” underlines his intense desire and the “t” alliteration the tenderness of her breath. The final line sets up a contrast and the hyphen divides it. He will live forever this way, or else he will die in a “swoon” -- a faintness of overwhelming love. Either way he spends eternity faithful and steadfast to his lover. The rhyme in the final 2 lines adds to his summing-up quality of the couplet where he expresses his main theme -- to be as steadfast to her as a “bright star” is to the countryside.

Frost’s poem is quite different. The form is a bit freer, the poem is written in 25 lines of octosyllables with a conversational tone and a varying rhyme scheme. Frost too looks to the star to be steadfast, although in his case it is steadfast in moral or political beliefs, not in love. Similar to Keats’ poem, Frost begins with an apostrophe, and adds to it “(the fairest one in sight),” an humorous allusion to the child’s tale of wishing on the fairest star. Similarly, we derive a sort of wish from this star. He calls the star “your loftiness,” another humorous play on “your highness”, reflecting its physical and moral height above us. The poet as “we” (meaning all men) grants the star some anonymity, some aspects of a hermit isolated and watching the earth as he gives him “some obscurity of cloud.” Dark brings out the light -- this is a subtle indication that “we” see the star as it is the stoic steadfastness when something “dark” and evil is taking place on earth. But Frost does not allow the star to get away with saying nothing -- his “position” requires his contributing advice. Frost implores him to say something catchy that we can cling to -- and the run on line emphasizes the energy of this begging. “Say something!” (9) disrupts the rhythm and adds even more desperation to his plea. All the star says is “I burn.” Frost with a tongue-in-cheek tone implores him to add scientific details -- the kind humans like to deal with. He speaks of “Farenheit” and “Centigrade” like they are languages -- and capitalizes “Language” for this purpose -- we understand facts. But it doesn’t really help that much, he says. In line 18 Frost changes to speaking of the star as “it” and alludes directly to Keats’ poem. Frost says that the star is like Keats’ Eremite, the star that steadfastly watched the goings-on on earth. In using this allusion Frost not only continues the “poetic tradition” but adds all the depth of meaning of Keats’ poem to his own. The star doesn’t want much of us -- only to stay above us. He says that “when the mob is swayed” or when social, political, or moral upheaval takes place and the norm is to be radical, the star likes being above it all, condescendingly regarding the earth. When this happens, we should “choose something like a star” and concentrate on it. In the final line the similarity between “stay” and “staid” emphasizes that we must emulate the star in being constant and moderate while society may revolve around us in social or political turmoil. This “staidness” is our key to survival like the stars’.

Therefore, one can see that these poems although similar in their title and central image of the star differ in their themes, form and treatment of the author’s ideas.

  • Highest level writing (9)
  • Actually, the University selected this as one of the better written that year, so don't let it discourage you.  Let it give you something to aspire to. 
  • Notice how sophisticated and sensitive the interpretation is. 
  • Notice that there are areas that aren't perfectly supported or might be contended (such a "the “m” alliteration emphasizes the falling of the snow"); however, the interpretation is so rich and well-supported otherwise, that such license is readily given to the writer.

Sample Free-Response Student Essay #2

Although both “Bright Star” by John Keats and “Choose Something Like a Star” by Robert Frost both address a star with a spirit of awe, the first uses formal diction to express a wish while the second uses informal diction and contains a lesson.

“Bright Star” contains lofty, formal kinds of words such as “thou art” and “splendor hung aloft” to show reverence toward the star. Keat’s specific word choices also contribute to the theme of the poem that man wishes happiness would last forever. Comparing the star to an eye with “eternal lids apart” brings to mind God, who is connected with eternity and happiness and the sky or heavens. The star is also compared with a hermit which brings to mind silence, holiness, and solemnity. The word “ripening” connotes life, and the speaker wishes to enjoy the best of life “forever.”

Robert Frost’s poem also address a star in the first fifteen lines, but the diction is informal. In plain, ordinary kinds of words, the speaker asks the star to “Say something to us that we can learn/By heart.” The speaker of this poem wants the star to tell the secret of its steadfastness, instead of just wishing to be like the star. Then in the last ten lines, this poem adds a lesson. Although the star seems to give “little aid,” it teaches the speaker “something in the end.” The speaker feels that just thinking of the noble star will help him to be steadfast and not to be swayed easily with the “mob.” 
  • A lower scoring essay (4)
  • Notice that the interpretation is largely correct but not very deep.  "Contains a lesson" is a fairly cheap way to interpret Frost's poem.
  • Notice that there is little development in the essay.  


Triolet and Villanelle as Lines

Blake: Exercise

Exercise: Label as assertion, textual evidence, or analysis:

1.___________________In the first poem, a young speaker relates that his mother is dead and his father sold him to become a chimney sweep.
2.__________________He is very young because he can hardly speak as he cries out the chimney sweep‟s street cry, “weep! weep!weep! weep!”
3.___________________He comforts Tom Dacre that being a good boy will have positive consequences: “He'd have God for his father & never want joy.”
 4.___________________The second poem has a different speaker—not the young boy but someone asking him, “Where are thy father & mother?”
5.  ___________________ The rest of the poem is the young boy‟s reply as he tells the speaker about his difficult life, wearing his “clothes of death” and singing “the notes of woe.” 6.___________________ The poem's last quatrain explains that because the boy seems “happy,” his parents feel free to abandon him while they “praise God & his Priest & King.”


Blake: Tone

Thoughts:

1789: The tone is innocent and all the more pitiful because of the child‟s innocence. He does not blame his father or those who force him to work. He sees the bright side of everything, when in fact the dream of the “coffins of black” is a more realistic description of his life.

1794: The tone is quite critical, even condemning, of a social system that allows parents to pray in church while their children are sold into slavery. In the last two lines, it‟s not perfectly clear if the speaker is blaming either “God,” or “his Priest” or the “King” or all of them, but it is clear that someone is responsible for the appalling life the child has to live, and hypocrisy is involved since all these entities should value the lives of innocent children more than the carrying out of religious exercises.


Paragraph Development:

Tone: First Poem

Assertion: The fact that the young speaker is totally unaware of how horrendous his life is creates a tone of naivete and innocence.

Evidence: The young chimney sweeper could not exist in more bitter circumstances. He was sold into the chimney sweep profession by his father and began the arduous work before he could even speak clearly. He sleeps in “soot” and in “cold” harsh weather, utterly uncared for.

Analysis: Even though the young boy is forced to work in degrading conditions and has been abandoned by his father, his belief that “if all do their duty, they need not fear harm” reveals that he is completely naïve about the “harm” he is exposed to every day.


Tone: Second poem

Assertion: The second poem is scathing, critical, and cynical. The speaker clearly perceives the harsh conditions the boy lives in, conditions directly caused by a social system that perpetuates child labor.

Evidence: The speaker sees “a little black thing among the snow” and asks him where his parents are. The child explains that because he was “happy upon the heath/And smil‟d among the winter‟s snow,” his parents clothed him “in the clothes of death,/And taught [him] to sing the notes of woe.”

Analysis: Since the child comprehends that his parents are to blame, in contrast to the first poem in which he does not see the truth, the tone is bitter and critical of the religious and social structure that praises the parents for going to church yet doesn‟t condemn them for abandoning their child.

Blake: Point of View

Thoughts:

1789: This poem is written from the point of view of the innocent young boy. His life seems “happy” because he is too young and naïve to understand that he is living in a hell upon earth—he has been sold by his father and forced to work in the dark at a job that will send him to an early grave. He, on the other hand, views everything that happens to him as a blessing. For instance, when Tom‟s hair has to be shaved, the speaker tells him not to fret because now the soot will not spoil it. He naively believes that if he does as he is told, he will “not fear harm,” yet he lives in the midst of harm.

1794: This poem is written from the point of view of an adult who asks the young boy where his father and mother are. This adult sees the truth immediately: he is not a young boy but “a little black thing among the snow.” All but these three lines are the boy‟s response. This point of view produces a somewhat cynical tone, as the adult clearly sees what the child cannot: his parents are praying in the church, praising not only God but the king, whose neglect is responsible for the boy‟s harsh life.


Paragraph Development:

Point of View: First Poem

Assertion: The speaker in the first poem is a young boy who, in his innocence and youth, does not realize how difficult his life is.

Evidence: The young boy simply narrates that his “father sold” him before he could speak clearly. He tells Tom Dacre that having his head shaved will really be a blessing, not a hardship. He further consoles Tom that the dream he has presages a beautiful, glorious life because they have God for their “father & never want joy.” The poem ends with the image of the “cold” day, but Tom is “happy & warm” because he is doing what he has been told to do.

Analysis: The young boy‟s lack of understanding of his hard lot in life is made all the more pitiful because he is uncomplaining and accepting of everything that happens to him.


Point of View: Second Poem

Assertion: In the second poem, the adult speaker fully realizes the woeful plight of the chimney sweep as the boy himself reveals what his life is like.

Evidence: In the first two lines, the speaker notes the “little black thing among the snow.” In line 3, he asks him where his parents are. The rest of the poem is the boy‟s answer. His parents are in church, “prais[ing] God & his Priest & King.”

Analysis: The boy‟s response reveals both the boy‟s lack of awareness of his true condition and the heartless way his parents and the church have ignored his basic needs. The poem is basically an indictment of the church in valuing religious exercises over people‟s lives.