By John Keats (c. 1819)
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…
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 sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
Analysis
The sonnet turns astronomy into intimacy. Keats rejects the star’s cold vigilance yet covets its constancy, relocating steadfastness from sky to body. The poem’s counterturn — “No — yet” — pivots from abstraction to touch, from lonely eternity to perpetual nearness measured in breath.
The closing couplet refuses a middle ground: either endless waking beside the beloved or surrender to oblivion. But the drama is tender, not theatrical. Constancy becomes a discipline of attention, a vow to remain present for each rise and fall. Keats finds infinity in a pulse.