es a simile to express what his unhappiness feels like, which is "like unwilling sleep"; the ultimate "unwilling sleep" is death. If the narrator is living, the more he dwells on his mortality, the more he feels like he is dead. On the other hand, if he is actually dead, then he is simply dead. The only thing that could console the narrator at this point would be immortality. These first two lines help us to establish the speaker's main concern in the poem.
             The "sick eagle looking at the sky" is another metaphor for Keats that shows his frustration at the "dizzy pain" he is experiencing. An eagle is usually thought of as a powerful and confident bird, perhaps even the bird with the most "grandeur". But the way Keats describes him, he has been stripped of all this power and can now only contemplate the greatness he was once capable of achieving; he is impotent. This is Keats' description of how powerless he feels when he thinks about death. Not only that, but Keats deliberately states that each "hardship tells [him] he must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky." The once-powerful eagle is now just sick and frustrated, and his death is not a quick and painless one, but one that is long-suffering. Keats continues to elevate himself to hero status by complaining about this death which he feels will be long-suffering; although in reality he doesn't know what kind of death he will have, his tendency for melodrama further emphasi!
             zes how truly appalled he is by death.
             The diction at the beginning of the poem shows the degree to which Keats' preoccupation with death is making him suffer. Instead of merely saying " difficulty," he uses "godlike hardship" and presents himself as a hero for undergoing these "hardships". Subtly, Keats is elevating himself to a hero and a god, and giving himself more "grandeur" than...