Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Please answer the following questions regarding the poem "Bright Star" by John Keats:1. what are the qualities of the star that he would not want...

In addition to not wanting to be alone like the star, the speaker of John Keats's "Bright Star," while wishing for the eternity of the star, does not desire the star's task of watching the earth



with eternal lids apart/Like Nature's patient sleepless Eremite



The static quality of the star is expressed in the speaker's oxymoron: 



a sweet unrest,/Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath/And so live ever--....



The tension of this poem is similar to that of Keats's "Ode to a Grecian Urn" in that the speaker admires the eternity of beauty as he does the eternity of the star, but he does not desire the static quality which allows no further action just as he realizes that the lovers painted upon the urn cannot consummate their love. In short, while the speaker wishes to transcend human life and its finiteness, he still does not want to lose his humanity.

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