Bright Star Poem Analysis

“Bright Star” by John Keats John Keats, who was born on October on October 31, 1795, in London, was one of the most famous English Romantic poets and until now. Keats’ poem, the “Bright star”, was wrote in 1819 and was revised in 1820 while on his final trip to Italy. His friends and his doctor warned him to get treatment for tuberculosis. John Keats knew that he was dying. He addressed “Bright Star” to his fiancé, Fanny Brawne, and it was published. John Keats died young but he had great talents to touch people’s heart by his Romantic Poems. http://www.biography.com/people/john-keats-9361568#early-years “Bright Star” is one of his major love poems that is written in his famous poetic forms – the Shakespearean sonnet. The tight line limit,

As we read line by line of this poem, we will get to know how these themes are expressed. Themes of the poem can vary from people to people for they have different aspects. According to David Ormerod, “The poem 's theme is, in part, the rejection of the conventional Christian conception of the afterlife, and the adumbration of a personal vision of the desired state of eternity.”

In the first stanza, Keats would love to be like the star that does not change and live forever but not alone. The first line reads “Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art--.” It starts by calling a star as if it were a person. We can know that Keats wants to be unchanging and constant as we face the word steadfast. The second line reads “Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night.” Keats wants to live forever but he does not want to be alone hung high up in the sky. The third line reads “And watching, with eternal lids apart,” meaning that he will watch and protect something with its opened eyes, but we still do not know what the star is watching. The fourth line reads “Like nature 's patient, sleepless Eremite.” According to Lilia Melani, the Professor of Brooklyn College, hermit, usually has a religious meaning. Sleeplessness of the star is the characterization of the star’s non-humanness, which is an impossible for a human being to become. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/star.html

The fifth line reads “The moving waters at their priest like task.” So now we know that the star was watching the moving waters. According to Lilia Melani, the rise and the fall of the tides are seen as a religious ritual.” Now the poem started to talk about earth rather than the star or the sky. The sixth line reads “Of pure ablution round earth 's human shores.” Pure ablution in this sentence once again talks about a religious cleaning. This word continues the religious imagery. The seventh line reads “Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask.” We can know that the star’s action had changed from “watching” to “gazing on.” These two words have similar meaning, but we are not sure why Keats changed the word. The mask mentioned in this sentence is the snow that covered the land. This snow has religious meaning of clean and white. The eighth line reads “Of snow upon the mountains and the moors--.” The word “moor” basically means lonely, hollow, and empty in this line. According to Lilia Melani, “Snow” in this line means beauty. So it means that the beauty can be found in diverse places on