Poet’s Corner: Keats–Bright Star

3 September 2026

(18 December 2015) As we continue down the trail of influences on our poetry, we turn from Shelley to the third of the major Romantics of the younger generation, John Keats, looking at one of his sonnets, titled “Bright Star” (using Keats’ original spelling):

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.

We first note that this is an English sonnet, and that Keats is one of the few poets after Shakespeare’s century to use this more difficult form of the sonnet; it requires a witty couplet at the end that is supposed give a kind of resolution to the sonnet. Shakespeare was a master of this form; Keats is the only Romantic to attempt it–all the others used the Italian form. This sonnet sets a scene of gazing at the night sky, at a particularly bright star, almost ‘wishing upon a star.’ The difference here the reader does not become aware of until the third quatrain, where the poet tells us he gazes up at this star with his head resting on the chest of his love, both hearing and feeling her breathing. It is interesting how the poet uses religious symbols: the “sleepless eremite” is a religious hermit, going about his purification rites, while following this with natural images of new snow on the mountains, and then concluding with images of his love. Listening to her breathe as he looks up at the stars will allow him to live forever in that moment, or die a sudden death! A bit extreme, we might say, but not unusual for the Romantics. Until next time, we wish all a Merry Christmas! And, of course, good reading!