“An Analysis of John Keat’s “Fill For Me A Brimming Bowl”
Poems in English Literature, particularly those from the romantic age, contain a varity of heavily-used
rhetorical devices in order to convey the meaning intended by the author. In John Keat’s “Fill for Me a
Brimminig Bowl” for instance, the reader finds a number of devices that aid in conveying the tone and,
ultimately, the theme of this poem. Concepts such as love, memory, thought, and sadness pervade the
poem in the poet’s attempt to convey the theme that trying to completely erase something from your head
with alcohol isn’t a good idea.
To begin to understand a poem, one must deal with the basics. These involve knowing general
information about the speaker, occasion, audience, purpose, and subject. The speaker of “Fill For Me A
Brimming Bowl” reveals himself (or herself) to be a man whose heart was broken by a woman. The
occasion is unknown, and the time is unknown. The speaker’s audience does not seem to be anyone in
particular and his\her purpose involves convey a strong emotion of a heartbreak. Brimming bowl act as
the subject of the poem. To paraphrase the events of the poem, one might say that the speaker is trying to
get so drunk to the point where he completely erases a woman, who broke his heart, from his mind.
In terms of tone, the poem begins with a unhappy or depressed mood or atmosphere but ends up
gloomyand hopeful .Some diction that suggest this involves the speaker first using the words “Drown”,
“Drug” “Banish” ,and “Despairing” ,but then later in the poem by employing words like “Softness”,
“Beaminess”, ”Smile”, “Joy”, and “Halo”, the speaker revels a more sadness tone by the end, This
suggest that the speaker begins to take the memories of the lady as good things instead of bad. He does
not have a depressed tone at the second half of the poem, he takes their memories has a “halo”.