Bright Star - John Keats Flashcards
The speaker extends the initial metaphor of the star, claiming it to be only “watching” and not participating. Also it’s life seems sterile and cold, lacking a richness of experience, like the “moving waters at their priestlike task”.
“Watching, with eternal lids apart, / Like Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite”
The speaker presents an image of consistency and a never-changing sense of being - one that he dismisses by presenting that kind of immortality as leading to isolation.
“Bright star! would I were as steadfast as thou art / Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night”
The speaker continues by saying he would rather live in the moment (suggestion of lust and sexual connotations?) with his love in a contrasting way to earlier in the sonnet - passionately, if not forever (similarly to Marvell).
“And so live ever - or else swoon to death.”
