English Literature GCSE: John Keats - Bright Star

Have you ever had a day, or a moment, or a feeling that you never wanted to end? Maybe you wished you could stay in that moment and make everything else come to a stop. Life is short. One poet knew that only too well. He believed you should try and live as intensely as possible. His name was John Keats.

We don't really know a great deal about the poem. Where did it come from? When did Keats actually write it? What inspired him to write it? Was it really about Fanny Brawne, or was it just about an idealized muse?

Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art. Not in lone splendor 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 masque of snow upon the mountains and the moors.

The speaker wants to convey a state of rapture with his lover. A permanence. Yeah, absolute permanence. To really put that across, he looks at the faithfulness of the star which grows brightly, permanently, so he wants to see his relationship with his lover in a permanent state in the way that a star looks down on Earth. He personifies the star, you know, he talks about the lidless eyes being in a state of unrest because he sees his own plight in terms of the star. He sees himself as this brightness which is coming through in the poem.

So there's quite a lot of religious references in the poem. You know, we have "Eremite," then "priest-like" and then "ablution," one line after the other. He sees the star as having this kind of godly power, which is quite clinical in its own way, the way he just sits back eternally, just looking down on human action, which I think probably terrifies Keats. The star is described as being alone and aloft. No wonder Keats mentions a couple of times he doesn't actually want to be like that, these two negations in the poem. Partly because he himself was ill - being ill isolated him. There's that kind of romantic sublime there, where something's so majestic and powerful, it vanquishes you.

No, yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast, to feel forever its soft fall and swell, awake forever in a sweet unrest, still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, and so live ever or else swoon to death.

And it's interesting, the way the language in the poem changes. You've got these big, almost cinematic terms at the beginning, and then it tends to get smaller and more intimate towards the end, with language like "tender-taken breath." There's a wonderful braveness, a declaration of not just seeing a woman as this loving object, a sexual object, but also someone who's tender, affectionate, that can be this mother figure, as a replacement for his own mother. So I think there's quite a lot of autobiographical stuff packed away in this poem.

So, among scholars, there's debate about for whom this poem was written. Talk to me about that. Maybe it is about Fanny Brawne. Oh, yeah, Keats's lover at the time. Because there's some evidence there was an earlier version of the poem. And when he met her, he might've qualified or changed bits. She's always described as being very pale. If you want to read that into the sonnet, you do have this "mask of snow." Hmm. This whiteness. And you imagine, you know, that is partly about the lover. Could be. It could be about her. And there are theories that maybe he wrote this poem near death.

And so live ever-or else swoon to death. "Swoon" is an interesting word to use when you're talking about death. One doesn't "swoon to death." I think that he accepts that this human condition is him being nature's patient. Her breath was a rise and a fall. He gets it. He's playing, he's toying with the idea of staying alive forever but he understands that although it'd be sweet, it'd be an unrest which is uncomfortable. It's not a desirable state to be in.

And it slots nicely into the collection of romantic poems, you know, with this exploration of the power of the natural world. Yeah, absolutely, because nature is sublime and it terrifies us. But also it makes us look at ourselves differently. It makes us look at the universe differently. Um, and we bring that refreshened attitude back to our own lives. Or, in Keats' sense, back to his relationship with his lover.

Keats was in love and he knew he was dying. I think that must've made his experience of life more intense and his poetry more passionate. I'm sure in this poem, the lover knows he can't really live forever. Like the star in the sky. But while everything else comes and goes, he knows his love, like the star, will never die. We are only here for a little while on Earth, we can't stop time. So perhaps we should think of Keats, of the lover, and think about how we might live more intensely. We should try to burn brightly, like the star.