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Bright star, would I were
stedfast as thou art-- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-- No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death. |
Feb - Apr 1819
Addressed to a star -possibly Polaris - the North Star.
The sonnet expresses the poet's wish to be as constant as the star while he presses against his sleeping love.
Keats dismisses a stars more apparent qualities, focusing on the star's steadfast nature.
In this poem, Death, is an alternative to love.
The poem is a single sentence.
Rhyme form of the Shakespearean sonnet
ababcdcdefefgg
with the customary volta / turn at the start of the final heroic couplet.
"Here lies one whose name was writ in Water"
John Keats self-revealing letter about himself and thoughts on society, class, etc.