Bright Star
Bright Star - meaning Summary
Yearning for Steadfast Love
Keats addresses a 'bright star' as a wish for steadfast constancy, contrasting the star's aloof, eternal watchfulness with human intimacy. He rejects lonely permanence detached from life, instead yearning to be unchangeable while lying on his beloved's breast, sensing her breathing. The poem frames love against mortality: the speaker longs for perpetual presence in tenderness, accepting that such eternity might mean living forever in love or dying.
Read Complete AnalysesBright star, would I were steadfast 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 priest like 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 steadfast, 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.
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