Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell
Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell - form Summary
Sonnet of Bleak Affirmation
Keats's sonnet frames an inward dialogue that moves from anguished questioning to bleak acceptance. Using the compact sonnet form, the speaker poses rhetorical questions about laughter, divine silence, and mortal pain, then shifts toward resigned resolution that fame and beauty pale before death. The tight structure concentrates emotion and enacts a formal "turn" where thought pivots from doubt to the assertion that death is life's ultimate reward.
Read Complete AnalysesWhy did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell No God, no demon of severe response Deigns to reply from heaven or from hell Then to my human heart I turn at once: Heart, thou and I are here, sad and alone, Say, why did I laugh? O mortal pain! O darkness! darkness! Forever must I moan To question heaven and hell and heart in vain? Why did I laugh? I know this being's lease My fancy to it's utmost blisses spreads Yet would I on this very midnight cease And all the world's gaudy ensigns see in shreds Verse, fame and beauty are intense indeed But death intenser, death is life's high meed.
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