John Keats, "The Living Hand"

images: hand, grasping, tomb, heart, reaching out, death, love, warmth

In John Keats poem, "This Living Hand", Keat utilizes imagery to write about death, suffering, and holding onto love. This could be that the writer is heartbroken and wants the person, whom he is writing about, to love him back. The lines, "so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights that thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood" expresses the writer's anger for possible rejection from the one he loves by saying that if the person doesn't love him back, then she will regret not taking the love that he is offering to her. She would regret it deeply to the point where she would want to die because her decision would lead to a constant reminder of how she should be with him. He then offers love to her in the last line of the poem and says that love will set her free: "And thou be conscience-calmed-- see here it is--I hold it towards you".

The lines "now warm and capable of earnest grasping" and "see here it is-- I hold it towards you" both ties together well because they both depict a strong sense of desperation. For instance, "grasping" gives an image of holding onto something dearly. As for “I hold it towards you”, it provides an image of the writer reaching out and hoping to get a hand, which represents love, back in return. Keat also uses symbolism to bring out the emotions and vibe of the poem. For example, in the line, "and in the icy silence of the tomb", Keat uses "icy" to relate it to the coldness and the feel of death. As for "silence", it represents darkness and death. "Icy" and "silence" provides an emphasis on the writer trying to get the person's attention by describing how awful death is.