Can anyone help with an Essay on John Keats?

Hello everyone, I am a college freshman that is currently taking an Honors Lit class. The class has been a challenge for me, but I am doing the best I can. We have been assigned a 1500 word essay about the dividedness of John Keats poetry. I have no clue where to start, and this paper has really been stressing me out. The prompt states that we must choose 2 of Keats poems, demonstrating how Keats dividedness manifests itself in the poetry. We need to attempt to theorize why Keats found dividedness congenial. If anyone has any knowledge of John Keats, any kind of help would be greatly appreciated. Here are some of the poems that we have analyzed:

1) "This living hand, now warm and capable" 2) "On first looking into Chapman's Homer" 3) "On seeing the Elgin Marbles" 4) When I have fears that I might cease to be" 5) "Isabella; or, the Pot of Basil" 6) The eve of St. Agnes 7) "ode to psyche 8) ode to melancholy.

If anyone can point me in the right direction in this I would be greatly appreciative.

Off the top of my head:

1) contrasting the effect a living hand has on the one he is addressing with the effect a dead hand might have
2) contrasting what he discovered on his journeys first-hand with what he read second-hand
3) not so clear - perhaps recognising his own mortality and the implied immortality of civilisation as represented by the marbles
4) contrasting the impossibility of trying to comprehend or experience all that life has to offer with the transience of his own life
5) presumably contrasts Isabella's love for someone of a lower class to her family's desire to marry someone more fitting
6) contrasting human activity and the pleasures of the flesh with the intense cold of the tomb
7) Psyche is too young a goddess to have rituals and temples in her honour but the poet promises to raise her to the heights of the other gods/goddesses - so there's the contrast between what he sees and what he wants her to become
8) contrasts pain with pleasure or sorrow with happiness or desire with fear

H

Thank you very much for you time and information. I like the comparisons you gave, they will help me get this paper going!

Any other input would be greatly appreciated!

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