Twinkle, Bright Star, Sparkle...

Bright star, would I were stedfast 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
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 stedfast, 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 sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.      

 

 

This poem is quite like the one I analyzed before On Autumn, it holds a cosmic spin to its descriptive beginning, and a reference to an avatar of love, a bit different in each. Here the avatar is quite physically described as versus the more metaphorical representation in the sky as priorly discussed. This lends it a certain air that is quite visible, even those without some kind of lover like that Keats knew can visualize the sweet figure nearby as they rest. While I'm not a romantic, and do in fact prefer the other lover image, I can relate my adoration for this poem in its integral star, versus stars, image. This star is a bit ambiguous as far as what it exactly represents in itself, but I like to think of it as Keats' non-loneliness, his coupling, which was inevitably at a standstill where it would bring him further into self succlusion, at least physically. With this beign so, that symbol remains distant until the image shifts to the moment being right beside him, a lover's form at rest. Here, he can live that impossible event, his marriage, in media res, if only for a brief while. However, even though the possibility is quite distant, the description that the love is the only thing keeping him alive is both accurate and quite paradoxical in that the love is not really furfilled. This draws another parallel to the prior poem in its open and deadly end, a type of end I particularly am quite fond and enjoy, even using it myself. It adds a certain alluring element of the inevitable, yet unpredictable future, and thusly creates an atmosphere of intrigue so that one wants to know what the next moment holds, to be sure that is not simply the end. This is perhaps the greatest  challenge of Keats in his fianl year as he had to face death head on, without comfort of love beyond mere writing. But sometimes writing can unleash the soul, however it often boxes it into candied emotions, quick to be resorbed by the masses. I'm not sure what security Keats had in mind for when his body was not longer able, but I think that whatever it might have been, Franny would certainly been there.