Bright star! Would I were stedfast as thou art

Question 1

Form

Answer 1

Shakespearian sonnet form

Question 2

“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art”

Answer 2

“Bright star” - Poetic apostrophe, addressing the star

• Speaker desires the eternal properties that the star has, but doesn’t desire the other factors that accompany the star

Question 3

“Not in the lone splendour hung aloft the night”

Answer 3

“Splendour” - beauty of the star
BUT
- Keats rejects the isolated nature of the star

Question 4

“Watching, with eternal lids apart”

Answer 4

• Personification of the star, emphasising its lack of humanity
• The star is presented as unblinking/ unresting

Question 5

“Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite,

Answer 5

“Eremite” - religious hermite, isolation
- Keats portrays the isolation in spirituality as undesirable
- Highlights the vast amount of time passing, “patient” “sleepless”
Simile and personification

Question 6

“Watching (…) the moving waters at their priestlike task or pure ablution round earth’s human shores”

Answer 6

• Holy nature of Earth
• Idyllic portrayal of nature
• Personification of water doing a “pristine task” - an image of eternity and transience, “moving”

Question 7

“Gazing on the (…) snow upon the mountains and the moors”

Answer 7

• Contrast between the heat and warmth of humanity and the cold nature of snow, space and eternity

Question 8

“Pillow’d upon my fear love’s ripening breast”

Answer 8

• Evokes feelings of warmth, intimacy and comfort
• Contrasts against the cold image of snow

Question 9

“To feel for ever its soft swell and fall”

Answer 9

• Tactile imagery
• Mimics the breathing of the woman

Question 10

“Awake for ever in a sweet unrest”

Answer 10

• Keats wishes to stay with his lover for eternity
  “Sweet unrest” - oxymoron
• Keats wants to remain awake to be close to his loved one, highlights the intimate moment
• Parallel between the speaker and the star

Question 11

“Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath”

Answer 11

• Repetition and alliteration - emphasis, yearning and longing
  “hear” - auditory description

Question 12

“And so live ever - or else swoon to death”

Answer 12

“And so live ever”
- Idea of human love being so special it can be eternal
“-“ caesura
“Or else swoon to death”
- Preference of death due to his overwhelming love

• Paradoxical ending, negative capabilities

Question 13

Biographical context

Answer 13

• Thought to be written for Fanny Brawne
• Thought to be written on his way to Rome, aware of his mortality