John Keats Poetry

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

His Life Keats was born in 1795 He lived his whole life under the shadow of the Napoleonic wars and their immediate aftermath He was liberal in his political views. He was not an atheist but had little time for Christianity. He was a metaphysical poet Keats believed that poetry was written for prosperity.

His Life He was a great romantic poet. He had no advantages of birth, wealth or education; he lost his parents in childhood, watched one brother die of tuberculosis and the other emigrate to America.  Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement. The poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are considered as among the most popular and analysed in English literature.

John Keats's literary career amounted to just three and a half years John Keats's literary career amounted to just three and a half years.  It began in July 1816 lasted until late 1819. Keats wrote 150 poems Critics viewed him as a poet ‘preoccupied with nature of the imagination and the poetry continues to the present’ 2 of his best works were written in late 1819-1820. These reflect Keats distraught and confused feelings towards Fanny Browne. Keats died prematurely in 1821 of tuberculosis.

This famous sonnet was written by Keats in Joseph Severn's copy of The Poetical Works of William Shakespeare opposite the poem 'A Lover's Complaint'.  Due to the fact it was written during Keats and Severn's voyage to Italy, many people believed it be Keats's last poem.  It was actually titled 'Keats's Last Sonnet' by Milnes in his 1848 biography of Keats.  However, careful studies by critics have dated its composition to spring 1819.  It was first published in a newspaper in 1838, seventeen years after Keats's death.  

Bright Star Letters and poem drafts suggest that Keats first met Frances (Fanny) Brawne between September and November 1818 During November 1818 an intimacy sprang up between Keats and Brawne but was very much shadowed by the impending death of Tom Keats, whom John was nursing.

On 3 April 1819, Brawne and her widowed mother moved into the other half of Dilke's Wentworth Place and Keats and Brawne were able to see each other every day and they would read together. He gave her the love sonnet “Bright Star’ as a declaration. It was a work in progress and he continued to work on the poem until the last months of his life and the poem came to be associated with their relationship. Critics say that "All his desires were concentrated on Fanny".

Bright Star!" the sonnet is considered one of Keats's loveliest and most paradoxical poems. In the poem the speaker wishes he were as eternal as a star keeps watch like a sleepless, solitary, and religious hermit over the "moving waters“. But while he longs for this unchanging state, he does not wish to exist by himself, in "lone splendour." Rather, he longs to be "Awake for ever" and "Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast.“ Unfortunately, these two desires—to experience love and to be eternal—do not go together. To love, he must be human, and therefore not an unchanging thing like the star.

Bright Star He wishes to "live ever" in love, but to be in love means to be human, which means that the speaker and the love he feels for the woman will change and eventually die. The only other possibility he can imagine is to "swoon to death." This can be interpreted to mean that he wishes to die at a moment when he is experiencing the ecstasy of love. Despite the awareness that the speaker seems to express about the paradox of having love and immortality, the poem as a whole can also be seen as the speaker's plea to have both of these qualities, however impossible that may be.

These are examples of late nineteenth-century editions of Keats's poetry.