Notes

"Bright Star" by John Keats is a poem which presents the idea that love is so powerful that the poet wishes to live forever to be with his lover through the themes of eternity and transience. Keats wishes to live forever but does not want to be a passive observer like the star and consequently seems to reluctantly accept transience.

The structure of the poem itself sets up the power of Keats' love. The poem combines the form of a Shakespearean sonnet (fourteen lines with iambic pentameter as the line structure and a final rhyming couplet) with the Petrachan structure of a divided octet and sestet within the poem. This structure emphasises the romance of the final rhyming couplet, making it all the more powerful. Between the octet and the sestet, there is a change in perspective and the divide provides a moment of contemplation of the grandeur of the opening section which emphasises Keats' deep love.

As the poem begins, Keats addresses the lone North Star:
"Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night"
The star is an unwavering fixed point in the sky. Keats uses apostrophe, as the star is absent and this asserts the grandeur of the notion of his unlimited love. Keats focusses on its permanence as he desires to be as permanent as the star for sake of his lover. The elongated vowels of the first line reflect the star's everlasting nature. Keats desires eternity and is afraid of transcience yet he immediately rejects the role of eternal passive observer that afflicts the star. The star may have "splendour" but it is lonely and without his lover, transcendence would be meaningless for Keats. Whilst he rejects this state of being, the poet still admires the star's grandeur and beauty. He feels love which is so strong that he wishes that he could express it in a way which is as grand as the star's beauty. However, his withdrawal of the idea of being like the star shows that it is his powerful love itself rather than immortality that is most important to him.

Keats examines why he does not want to be like the star who he believes is alone and lonely:
"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,"
Keats sets up the idea of the star "watching" but defers the reveal of what is being watched until the end of the octet which emphasises the permanence of the star and its role as a passive observer. The word "eternal" appears to be describing the metaphorical eyes of the star but it actually describing the length of the star's seperation from everything else through the technique of transferred epithet. Another example of transferred epithet is contained in the description of the Eremite as it is compared to the star in its unwaveringness. This idea is also shown by the consonant pattern which slows the reader and makes them wait like the star and the Eremite. Additionally, each line in this section ends with a strange line break as the meter of the poem is so important in emphasising the romance of Keats' intentions that he forces his lines around in order to use it. The image of water is a powerful one due to its complex beauty. The waves of the water themselves are transient but - like humanity - as a collective, the sea is eternal. In this way, he grants these inanimate objects with transience in return for their immortality. It is a trade-off with nature. The waters' are as duty-bound to their task of cleansing humanity as the star is with shining down amd watching. Keats considers these tasks to be admirable due to the important ritualised responsibility that they bring. The humans' "shores" are not only the beaches but also their achievements. The waters may be eternal but these achievements are simply lost due to human transience. Keats seems to acknowledge that this could be the fate of his love which is why he tries desperate to escape death to stay with his lover forever.

Keats further builds his rejection of eternal isolation in the closing lines of the octet:
"Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-"
The lexical choice of "gazing" suggests great longing to be close to the earth out of the isolation with which it is burdened. The gentle vowels of this section reinforces the softness of the landscape. The metaphor of the snow as a "mask" indicates that despite its beauty, the snow hides humanity leaving instead a bleak, barren void. Keats subverts Romantic conv