“This living hand, now warm and capable” Summary

“This living hand, now warm and capable” Themes

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  Death and Mourning

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• 

  Love, Fidelity, and Guilt

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Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “This living hand, now warm and capable”

• Lines 1-3

  This living hand, now warm and capable
  Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold
  And in the icy silence of the tomb,

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 4-7

  So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights
  That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood
  So in my veins red life might stream again,
  And thou be conscience-calm’d–

  

  

  

  

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• Lines 7-8

  see here it is–
  I hold it towards you.

  

  

  

  

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“This living hand, now warm and capable” Symbols

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  Hands

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“This living hand, now warm and capable” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

• Apostrophe

  

  

  

  

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• Antithesis

  

  

  

  

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• Alliteration

  

  

  

  

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• Caesura

  

  

  

  

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“This living hand, now warm and capable” Vocabulary

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• Earnest
• Thou/thy/thine
• Conscience-calm'd

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Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “This living hand, now warm and capable”

• Form

• Meter

• Rhyme Scheme

“This living hand, now warm and capable” Speaker

“This living hand, now warm and capable” Setting

Literary and Historical Context of “This living hand, now warm and capable”

More “This living hand, now warm and capable” Resources

• External Resources

  • The Poet's Life — A biography of Keats from the Poetry Foundation.

  • Keats-Brawne Letters — Read a selection of Keats's letters to Fanny Brawne, the love of his short life and a possible source of inspiration for "This living hand."

  • Introduction to Romanticism — Read the Poetry Foundation's introduction to British Romanticism, the literary movement with which Keats's work is associated.

  • The Poem Aloud — Check out a reading of the poem, courtesy of the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association.

  • The Keats-Shelley House — The website of the Keats-Shelley House museum in Rome, complete with media and resources related to Keats's work, life, and death.

• LitCharts on Other Poems by John Keats

  • A thing of beauty is a joy for ever (from Endymion)

  • Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art

  • In drear nighted December

  • La Belle Dame sans Merci

  • Lamia

  • Ode on a Grecian Urn

  • Ode on Indolence

  • Ode on Melancholy

  • Ode to a Nightingale

  • Ode to Psyche

  • On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

  • On Seeing the Elgin Marbles

  • On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again

  • On the Grasshopper and Cricket

  • On the Sea

  • The Eve of St. Agnes

  • To Autumn

  • To Sleep

  • When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be