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Bright star Summary & Analysis
by John Keats

Bright star Summary & Analysis
by John Keats

  • Intro
  • Summary
  • Themes
  • Line-by-Line
    Explanations
  • Symbols
  • Poetic
    Devices
  • Vocabulary &
    References
  • Form, Meter, &
    Rhyme Scheme
  • Speaker
  • Setting
  • Context
  • Resources
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The Full Text of “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”

1Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art—

2         Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night

3And watching, with eternal lids apart,

4         Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,

5The moving waters at their priestlike task

6         Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,

7Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

8         Of snow upon the mountains and the moors—

9No—yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,

10         Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,

11To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,

12         Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,

13Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

14And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Introduction

    • “Bright Star” is a sonnet by the British Romantic poet John Keats. Written in 1818 or 1819, the poem is a passionate declaration of undying, constant love. The speaker wants to be “stedfast”—constant and unchanging—like the “bright star” described in the poem’s first eight lines. But, unlike the “bright star,” the speaker does not want to be isolated or distant from human life: instead, the speaker wants to spend eternity locked in a passionate embrace with his or her lover. The speaker fantasizes about this unchanging love—but it's not clear whether it can actually be achieved in real life. As the speaker acknowledges in the poem's final line, his or her fantasy is fragile, threatened by the death and change that eventually overwhelm all human beings.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Summary

    • Bright star, I want to be as steady and unchanging as you are—though I don’t want to hang alone in the night sky, with my eyes always open, like a hermit who never goes to sleep, patiently watching the earth’s oceans wash the shores in the same way that a priest ceremonially washes people to purify them, or looking at the new-fallen snow on the mountains and hills. I don’t want to be still in that sense, but I do want to be steady and unchanging, lying on my beautiful lover’s chest, always feeling its rising and falling, always awake, in a pleasant sleeplessness, always hearing her breathe in and out. I want to live that way forever—or I want to die.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Themes

    • Theme Love and Steadiness

      Love and Steadiness

      “Bright Star” contrasts two kinds of steadiness. In the first eight lines of the sonnet, the speaker describes a star, watching ceaselessly over the earth from far away. The star is an ideal of steadiness and constancy, but it is also isolated and lonely, far away from the world of human life. In the final six lines, the speaker imagines a different kind of steadiness: an intimate embrace between two lovers that lasts forever. This embrace serves as an ideal, a dream, which the speaker deeply desires, even if he or she is unable to attain it. In this imaginary embrace, the speaker achieves all the steadiness of the star with none of its isolation.

      In the first eight lines of “Bright Star” the speaker admires the constant presence of a star, yet also portrays the star as being lonely and distant. The star is “hung aloft” in the sky, high above the earth. From its height it watches the world below, the “moving waters” and the “new soft-fallen mask / of snow.” The star is committed and constant in its watchfulness. The speaker describes it as “sleepless,” its eyelids eternally open. This seems admirable to the speaker: he or she praises it for its “stedfast[ness]” and wants to imitate it, to achieve the same “stedfast[ness].”

      In doing so, the speaker plays on a long-standing poetic tradition. Because sailors used stars as fixed points to measure their position on the ocean, stars have often served as symbols of constancy and steadiness. They do so, however, at a price: the stars are constant and dependable because they are so far above earth. They are steadfast precisely because they are separated from the human life they ceaselessly shine upon. The speaker recognizes this cost, as indicated by the poem’s description of the star as being an “Eremite” or hermit—a person who lives alone in the wilderness.

      As the “Not” and “No” that begin lines 2 and 9 make clear, the speaker wants to have the “stedfast[ness]” of the “Bright Star,” but does not want to achieve that steadfastness in the same lonely, isolated way. Instead, the speaker proposes another form of steadfastness, achieved not through distance but rather through love: the speaker wants to be “pilow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast” “for ever.” In other words, the speaker wants to be locked in a tender, intimate embrace with his or her lover for eternity. This embrace might be read as being literal or as being a metaphor for a permanent, unchanging, loving relationship. Either way, this eternal embrace achieves the “stedfast[ness]” of the “Bright Star” without its isolation.

      The speaker does not achieve this eternal embrace in the poem. Instead, the speaker only fantasizes about it. Indeed, the poem raises an implicit question about whether such an embrace is possible: whether the “stedfast[ness]” of the star can be achieved on earth—or whether it depends on the star’s isolation from the complications and troubles of human life. The speaker, after all, ends the poem stating that to achieve such an embrace would mean to “live ever—or else swoon to death.” It is possible to say that this line is a statement of resolve: that the speaker is saying that he or she will achieve such a loving, embrace or die trying. But it could just as easily be read as a recognition of reality. After all, everyone eventually “swoons to death,” and so perhaps the dream of a loving, steadfast, never-ending breath can never be anything more than a dream.

  • Line-by-Line Explanation & Analysis of “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”

    • Lines 1-4

      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 first four lines of “Bright Star” establish the poem’s form and its broad themes. The poem begins with the speaker addressing a “star” directly. This is an instance of apostrophe: the star is both very far away and not human.

      In the first line of the poem, the speaker also expresses a wish to be as “stedfast” as the star. In other words, the simile suggests that the speaker wants to be as steady and as constant as the star. This wish is underlined by the assonance between “bright” and “I”: there is a sonic link that binds together the speaker and the star, and justifies the speaker’s desire to emulate the star. In making this wish, the speaker is playing on an old tradition in poetry. Since stars were used by sailors as fixed points to help their navigation, they were frequently symbols of stability and constancy.

      But there’s a problem: the star is lonely. In lines 2-4, the speaker reflects on how isolated the star is from human life, how it hangs in the sky, watching events on earth. The speaker wants to be constant and steady like the star, but not isolated.

      As the speaker describes the star’s isolation, he or she uses a series of devices. First, the speaker uses metaphor: giving the star “lids”—in other words, eyelids—and, implicitly, eyes, with which it watches events on earth. (The consonant /l/ sound in line 2 also reinforces the star’s isolation: linking together “lone,” “splendor,” and “aloft,” as if to insist that the star is only beautiful because it is so high above, so distant from, the speaker).

      Then, in line four, the speaker compares the start to a “patient, sleepless Eremite.” An eremite is a hermit, someone who lives alone in the wilderness. Both the metaphor and the simile personify the star giving it human characteristics. (And once the star has received those human characteristics, it seems less weird to talk to the star, as the speaker is doing here.)

      “Bright Star” is a Shakespearean sonnet and, in these lines, it follows the standard meter and rhyme scheme for this form: it’s written in iambic pentameter (five poetic feet per line, each with an unstressed-stressed syllable pattern) and rhymed ABAB.

      The speaker generally handles this prestigious, difficult form with confidence—a confidence that reflects the strength of the speaker's conviction in the poem and the wishes it expresses. But there are some blemishes in the meter. For instance, note the spondee in the poem’s first foot: “Bright star.” This is followed by what is arguably a trochee two feet later: “would I | were sted-| fast as …” The speaker may want to be “stedfast” but the hiccups in the meter indicate that he or she isn’t quite there yet!

    • Lines 5-8

      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—

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    • Lines 9-12

      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,

    • Lines 13-14

      Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
      And so live ever—or else swoon to death.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Symbols

    • Symbol Bright Star

      Bright Star

      In the first line of the poem, the speaker addresses a “Bright Star”—which may be an extended metaphor for the speaker's lover, or an actual star in the sky. In either case, the speaker plays on a long tradition in poetry of using stars as symbols. For instance, poets often use stars as symbols of beauty, their twinkling light representing the earthly beauty of a diamond or a lover’s eye. That’s certainly present here—the speaker describes the star as a beautiful thing, focusing on its "lone splendour." And if the "bright star" serves as an extended metaphor for the lover herself (as we discuss in our Poetic Devices section), then the speaker is offering an elegant and moving compliment to her by comparing her to a star: she has a kind of unearthly beauty.

      Poets also use stars as symbols of constancy and stability. Sailors use stars to help them navigate, since the stars offer stable reference points for navigation equipment. Of course, there’s something ironic, even sad, about the fact that the stars are so far away, so inaccessible: they are symbols of constancy and stability, sure, but they are symbols that no one on earth can possess or attain. The same is true of their beauty: it seems unreal, magical. The star is a kind of ideal that the speaker wants to attain—but cannot.

    • Symbol Snow

      Snow

      In lines 7-8, the speaker imagines that the “bright star” sees a “new soft-fallen mask / Of snow upon the mountains and the moors.” The poem invites its readers to envision this snow, a delicate dusting over the surface of the earth. In this sense, it seems like literal, actual snow. But it may also carry some symbolic weight: snow is often used in poetry as a symbol of purity and innocence.

      This suggests how the “bright star” sees the world. From its height, high above the world, it can’t (or doesn’t want) to see the dark, difficult parts of human life. Instead, it sees the world as a pure and gentle space. The speaker doesn’t present any evidence to contradict the “bright star” and its understanding of life on earth. Indeed, the speaker seems to want to preserve that sense of purity and innocence—but to do away with the distance from earth it requires.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Poetic Devices & Figurative Language

    • Apostrophe

      In the first line of the poem, the speaker directly addresses the “bright star,” saying “would I were stedfast as thou art.” In other words, the speaker wants to be as steady and constant as the star itself. But the star is also distant and isolated: the speaker compares it to an “Eremite” or hermit—someone who lives in isolation from society. So when the speaker addresses the star in line 1, this is an example of apostrophe: talking to something which is both inaccessible and inanimate.

      The rest of the poem is also a form of apostrophe, as the speaker tells the “bright star” what he or she wants and doesn’t want. This is a little bit like confessing a secret to a diary. The speaker gets to express his or her desires without fear of rejection or embarrassment, because the star can’t reply or judge.

      This might seem surprising in a love poem. Though the speaker expresses deep, passionate love, he or she isn’t actually talking to a lover. In fact, the use of apostrophe suggests that there might be some tension in their relationship: perhaps the speaker addresses the star because the speaker doesn’t feel comfortable talking directly to this lover herself. The speaker has passionate desires to confess, but evidently doesn't trust this lover enough to tell her about them directly.

    • Personification

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    • Simile

    • Metaphor

    • Extended Metaphor

    • Repetition

    • Enjambment

    • End-Stopped Line

    • Caesura

    • Alliteration

    • Assonance

    • Consonance

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Vocabulary

    Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.

    • Stedfast
    • Thou
    • Art
    • Splendour
    • Aloft
    • Lids
    • Eremite
    • Priestlike
    • Ablution
    • Human shores
    • Soft-fallen mask
    • Moors
    • Pillow'd
    • Ripening
    • Unrest
    • Swoon
    Stedfast

    • Steady or unchanging.

  • Form, Meter, & Rhyme Scheme of “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”

    • Form

      “Bright Star” is a Shakespearean sonnet. On a broad level, this means it has 14 lines broken into an octave and a sestet, and it ends with a final rhyming couplet.

      Shakespeare didn’t invent the form that bears his name, but he wrote more than 150 of them. And by the time Keats wrote “Bright Star” in the early 19th century, the form was strongly associated with the bard.

      Keats both follows Shakespeare’s example, and tries out new things here that break from the form Shakespeare popularized. For instance, "Bright Star" closely follows the traditional meter and rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet. Though there are irregularities here and there, the poem exhibits confidence and control as it moves through a difficult and prestigious form.

      In addition to its meter and rhyme scheme, a sonnet usually has a volta, or turn. This is a moment where the speaker reflects on what he or she has already said—and, often, changes his or her mind, or offers a new way of looking at things. In a Shakespearean sonnet, the volta falls at the end of line 12. In a Petrarchan sonnet, it falls at the end of line 8. Since sonnets only have 14 lines total, that means that a Petrachan sonnet gives the speaker more space to reflect, to change his or her mind.

      Although “Bright Star” follows the rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, its volta falls in line 9 and continues to expand upon this idea through the rest of the poem. That’s where the speaker switches things up, finally telling the reader what he or she actually wants; in the first 8 lines, the speaker tells the reader what he or she doesn’t want. The poem is thus a kind of hybrid sonnet—a Shakespearean sonnet that follows some of the conventions of a Petrarchan sonnet.

    • Meter

      “Bright Star” is written in iambic pentameter, which is the traditional meter for a Shakespearean sonnet. A line of iambic pentameter has ten syllables total, divided up into five poetic feet with two syllables per foot. These feet follow a da DUH rhythm, with a stress falling on every other syllable. That might sound complicated, but iambic rhythm is actually a close reflection of the way people actually speak.

      It's easy to see what iambic pentameter looks like by scanning line 3:

      And watch- | ing, with | eter- | nal lids | apart

      Generally, the poem’s meter is pretty good: the speaker is confident and direct, and that confidence expresses itself in his or her control over the poem’s rhythm. There are some moments where things get more complicated, however. For instance, the poem starts with a spondee (a foot with two stressed syllables in a row), instead of an iamb:

      Bright star, | would I | were sted- | fast as | thou art

      The rhythm of this first line never quite sorts itself out. After the spondee in the first foot, the next two feet are iambs. Then there’s a trochee (stressed-unstressed), and a final iamb. Though the speaker wants to be steady as a “star,” the meter might indicate that the speaker's not quite there yet: the poem betrays an underlying unsteadiness or insecurity.

      There’s a similar problem in line 9:

      No—yet | still sted- | fast, still | unchange- | able

      In addition to the opening trochee, there’s another trochee in the poem’s third foot. Once again, when the speaker imagines being “stedfast,” the meter breaks, becomes unsteady and irregular. These metrical problems might remind the reader that the poem is a fantasy, not a reality. Though the speaker describes with considerable confidence being with his or her lover forever, locked in a permanent embrace, he or she isn’t there yet—and may never be.

    • Rhyme Scheme

      “Bright Star” is a Shakespearean sonnet. It follows the standard rhyme scheme for such a poem. In its first twelve lines, it follows a criss-cross rhyme pattern:

      ABABCDCDEFEF

      In the final two lines of the poem, the rhyme scheme shifts. Lines 13-14 form a couplet, rhymed:

      GG

      For the most part, the poem uses strong, perfect rhymes, like “shores” and “moors” in lines 6 and 8. Though the Shakespearean sonnet is a challenging and prestigious form, the speaker seems to handle its demands with confidence. This confidence underlines the speaker’s definite, direct description of his or her desires: this speaker knows what he or she wants and does not equivocate about it.

      There is one rhyme that’s a little off, however: “unchangeable” and “swell” in lines 9 and 11. This pair is probably best described as a slant rhyme: the link between them lies in the consonant /l/ sound in “unchangeable” and “swell.” One might interpret this slant rhyme in a number of ways. Perhaps the speaker is not quite as confident as he or she pretends to be. Or perhaps the speaker wants to underline a tension in the poem—between the speaker’s “still[ness]” and the movement his or her lover’s body makes, its “soft fall and swell.” The speaker may be unchanging, unmoving, but the lover’s body does change and move. In either case, the slant rhyme is a rare formal blemish in a poem that is otherwise very tightly controlled.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Speaker

    • The speaker of “Bright Star” is someone passionately, deeply in love. The poem is dedicated to describing the speaker’s desire to spend eternity lying on his or her lover’s breast, feeling it rise and fall as this lover breathes, without otherwise changing and moving. The fact that the speaker needs to express this desire at all implies that it hasn’t yet been realized. Maybe the speaker knows that he or she can’t spend eternity lying on a lover’s breast—their love will change; they will grow old and die, as the speaker acknowledges in the poem's final line: "And so live ever—or else swoon to death."

      “Bright Star” doesn’t give its reader much other information about the speaker: the reader never learns the speaker’s gender (explicitly—given the time in which the poem was written, it’s probably safe to assume the speaker is man), nor does the reader learn the speaker’s education, class, or profession. This is probably intentional: the poem focuses with intense concentration on the speaker’s love. Any other details about his or her life are simply irrelevant to that passionate, fulfilling relationship.

  • “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” Setting

    • “Bright Star” doesn’t give its reader much information about its setting. The speaker addresses his or her lover in intimate, affectionate terms, using the informal "thou" and fantasizing about lying "pillow'd" on her "ripening breast." So it’s safe to assume that the two of them are together, in a private space. (The poem is not, for instance, a speech addressed to a big crowd or a sermon that might get read in a church).

      That’s about all the reader really learns about the setting—and it’s a pretty general piece of information. The poem doesn’t place the speaker and his or her lover in a specific city, country, or historical moment. This is purposeful: all the speaker cares about is love. The details of time and place are irrelevant to the speaker’s feelings, so he or she simply ignores them. Indeed, the speaker hopes to remain in a blissful embrace for all eternity. In other words, the speaker wants his or her love to endure in all times and places.

  • Literary and Historical Context of “Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”

      Literary Context

      John Keats was a major figure in a literary movement called “Romanticism.” Romanticism emerged around 1790, and remained active into the 1820s, when Keats was writing. It’s easiest to understand the Romantics and what they stood for by contrasting them with the kind of poetry—and the kind of thinking—that was happening in Europe before they burst onto the scene.

      The 18th century is often called the “Enlightenment.” It was a time when intellectuals and writers prized reason and order; they sought to organize society and art on the example of science. For early Romantic writers like Wordsworth and Coleridge, this emphasis on rationality was constraining: it denied all the vibrant, creative parts of the human spirit. It resulted in poetry without any spark. They sought to revitalize poetry by turning to the irrational, the magical, and the antiquated.

      Keats belonged to the second generation of Romantic poets. He was born in 1795, just when the movement was getting started. Along with friends like Byron and Shelley, Keats sought to revitalize the movement. This younger generation felt that the early romantic poets, like Wordsworth and Coleridge, had gotten too conservative as they aged.

      There are some Romantic poems—like Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”—that are more explicit about these intellectual conflicts. But “Bright Star” bears some scars from the poetic battles of the late 18th and early 19th century literary battles—particularly in its form. “Bright Star” is a Shakespearean sonnet and it has much more in common with the passionate, hyperbolic love sonnets written during the Renaissance than the cold, mathematical poetry of the 18th century.

      The sonnet is an Italian form, popularized by the Italian poet Petrarch; it came into English in the 16th century, as poets like Sir Thomas Wyatt translated Petrarch’s sonnets. (See, for example, his “Whoso List to Hunt”). Though the sonnet gradually broadened—tackling religious and political questions—at its heart, it’s made for love poetry. Keats revives the form, returning to its roots as love poetry, and in so doing, signals his allegiance to earlier modes of writing that indulge in deep, irrational passion.

      Historical Context

      “Bright Star” does not make any references to its political or historical context. Instead its speaker turns inward, focusing only on his or her love. Indeed, it feels like the speaker might be purposely avoiding contemporary politics. The Romantic poets tended to be politically radical—supporting revolutionary movements that aimed to overthrow the monarchies and dynasties that ruled Europe.

      In 1818-19, when Keats likely wrote “Bright Star,” such political movements were in retreat. In France, a popular revolt had overthrown the monarchy in the 1790s—an event called the “French Revolution.” But by the 1810s, the same royal family was back on the throne. And despite a growing and active labor movement in England, the country was also becoming more and more conservative, as the stodgy Victorian era approached. “Bright Star” focuses intensely on matters of the heart—to the exclusion of all else. Perhaps it does so because its speaker (or its author) doesn’t want to think about the disappointing developments elsewhere.

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