Bright Star - John Keats

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 talk,
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,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a swift unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live-ever -- or else swoon to death.

"Un-confuse" it:

John Keat's real "Bright Star"

John Keats writes his poem about a star. A star, which will never move for eternity and never change. This reflects what he wants from love. He wants his love to be unchanging and it has to suit him. The rhyming scheme is of a Shakespearean sonnet on love. However, he has a completely different view on love as compared to the other poems. He compares love to a painting in “thou art” where love should be perfect and unmoving. He wants to always appreciate it and the lady of his adoration. The words “soft-fallen” show how he uncovers things about the lady, he is stripping her bare. Then as the poem goes, the imageries are with sexual intention. He wants to be “pillow’d upon my fair love’s ripening breast”, “feel for ever its soft fall and swell” and “her tender-taken breath”. He wants that of his lover. Thus all this adds up to what type of love he wants, a dominating type of love. Moreover, the words “priestlike tasks”, “pure” and “snow” can be found in the poem, which means holy or innocent. This contrasts to the type of love he desires from his lover. Juxtaposition is used to highlight the sexual intentions used in the poem. At the last line, John Keats also reinforces that if he does not get to love the life that he so as to mention just now, he would really rather not live at all to be honest. However to be frankly speaking, nowadays nobody would seriously “die” for love and that show how maybe John Keats was not seriously when he wrote the last line in the poem. This also reflects the type of love society has created, not everything is pure and there are many sexual meanings to what lovers do nowadays.