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AP Success - AP English Literature Poetry Analysis: Two Poems About Stars

Question 1

Essay

Read the following two poems very carefully, noting that the second includes an allusion to the first.

Read the poems 'Bright Star' by John Keats and 'Choose Something Like a Star' by Robert Frost carefully. Consider how each poem presents the image of the star and the speaker’s relationship to it. Then write a well-organized essay in which you compare and contrast the themes and stylistic elements of the two poems, including how the poets use the figure of the star to explore ideas about constancy and knowledge.

In your essay, be sure to consider both theme and style, including but not limited to the use of imagery, figurative language, tone, and structure.

In your response you should do the following:
• Respond to the prompt with a thesis that presents a defensible interpretation.
• Select and use evidence from both poems to support your line of reasoning.
• Explain how the evidence supports your line of reasoning.
• Use appropriate grammar and punctuation in communicating your argument.

Source 1.1

"Bright Star" by John Keats:

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.

"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,

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

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.

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,

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.

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