Close Reading: Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art

Key Terms:

Alliteration - Repeated sound of the first consonant in a series of multiple words.

Apostrophe - Directly addressing something, someone or an abstract concept not present in the poem.

Volta - The turn of thought or argument in a sonnet.

Iambic Pentameter - Line of five feet of unstressed followed by stressed syllables. 

Personification - Human qualities given to animals, objects or ideas.

Speaker - The voice narrating the poem. Not necessarily the poet. 

It has been a long time since I have done a close reading, and with all my blogs on theory and criticism, I think its important not to lose sight of our appreciation for the art. So in today's blog we will go back to the basics of appreciating and admiring poetry for what it is. I have chosen to look at this sonnet by John Keats - Bright Star! Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art.

BRIGHT 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 priestlike task	5
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,	10
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.

This is a beautiful poem from Keats, and it all hinges on a paradox; an unresolveable conflict within the mind of the speaker. The speaker, gazing in admiration at the night sky, longs to be unmoving, unchanging and as eternal as the star above that is observing the world below. While he longs for the star's unchanging state, he does not wish to be alone, but rather, "pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast". These two desires of the speaker contradict one another. He cannot both love and be eternal. To love he must be human and therefore he can not be eternal like the star. While he longs for this moment of love to last forever, he is aware that it is not possible so he hopes he may "swoon to death" in the moment.

As we can tell by its 14 line structure written in iambic pentameter, this poem is a sonnet. There are many variations of the sonnet, but most are based on one of two major forms: the Petrarchan/Italian sonnet or the Shakespearean/English sonnet. The interesting thing about this sonnet is it seems to nestle somewhere between the two. It has the structural elements of the Shakespearean sonnet; the three quatrains in the rhyming scheme abab cdcd efef and followed by the couplet gg, but its thematic division more closely follows the Petrarchan tradition of an octave setting followed by a sestet response. In the first eight lines we have our attention on the nature of the star and then the volta shifts the focus to the speaker, his love and the resolution to the paradox.

In the poem's opening, the speaker establishes the image and nature of the star. He does this through the literary device of apostrophe; directly addressing the star: "Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art" This opening line establishes, from the very start, the eternal nature of the star. The alliteration of "star" and "steadfast" not only accentuates that unchanging nature, but also introduces the theme of the speaker's transience. This is built on through the personification of the star: It is "patient" and "sleepless" and has "eternal lids". These are all human qualities that focus on the eternal and unchanging nature of the star. The star is also "aloft", out of reach and unattainable, which feeds into the notion of the speaker's unattainable desires. I think it is also interesting to note that, rather than someone looking up at the star, we have the star doing the watching down on Earth. This has the effect of pushing the speaker's presence out of that opening octave; giving us, not an interpretation of the star by the self, but rather, a more harmonious acceptance of nature for what it is. 

As we move into the second half of the octave we receive a description of what the star is watching. There are two images that emerge and both of them suggest the idea of pureness. The first of these is the "moving waters". The waters take on a spiritual significance as they have the task of "ablution" - a religious purification, "a priestlike task" that is performed on the "human shores". The second of these images is that of the snow and the metaphor of "the new soft-fallen mask" that covers "the mountains and the moors." I think these are interesting images placed together and the speaker in some way identifies with them both. Perhaps he feels these acts of purification or spiritual cleansing are a means to transcend the limitations of human life and fend off the changing and temporary nature of being human.

The  word "No" in the 9th line marks the sonnet's volta and the switch in theme as it moves into the sestet. We get this parallelism, or repetition, of "still" in line 9, "still steadfast, still unchangeable" and then again later in line 13, "Still, still to hear her tender breath". This further reiterates the desire for eternity as we have this continued repetition and again reverts back to the earlier alliteration highlighting those three words "star", "steadfast" and "still". The focus is now away from the star and on to the speaker's own existence, and Keats looks to mirror the imagery of the octave to juxtapose the two. The moving waters washing the shore in lines 5 and 6 are now echoed in the "soft fall and swell" of the woman's breast in line 11. We also reach this point of conflict where the speaker is wishing for something the star does not have; steadfastness without solitude. He longs to find the "still unchangeable" nature of the star within the context of human love. He is "pillowed" on his love's breast. The breast is a symbol of fertility that is also described as "ripening", it is a representation of organic life, everything the star can not be. It is far removed, "aloft" and "watching", but unable to "feel". The conflict comes to a head in the couplet where we are offered two mutually exclusive possibilities . The speaker determines that he can live in the sensual experience of love, which, because time seems to slip away, seems to be "for ever". Failing that, he hopes that he might "swoon to death", swoon meaning to be overcome by extreme emotion, and thus he dies at a moment of purest love and happiness.

This sudden mention of death at the poem's end really grasps the reader contrasted with the gentle images of life, but this reversal is not really a surprise as the speaker continually wedges himself into this unsolvable predicament. The poem meanders leaving ideas hanging as "Not" on line 2 and "No-" on line 9 interject into the poem's flow. The poem's central unity is a mess of threads that can't be sorted, only abandoned. If we isolate that closing line we see it embodies the contradictions of the poem's whole: "and so live forever  - or else swoon to death." The beauty of the paradox is that we do find a common ground between death and eternal life: they last forever. Thus resolving the speaker's problem as both dying and living for eternity will make that moment of perfect bliss last forever - he will be "steadfast".