John Keats: “Bright Star” Revisited
Love overcomes loneliness? Maybe, but only through our shared legacy
An Eremite, a troglodyte,
An errant knight beset with blight
Each looked up from the Isle of Wight
In lonely splendor, huddled by night.
Steadfast contrasting outcasts, such deportees
Contemplated celestial fixities.
“The stars don’t shine, they burn”
But whatever they do, those three discerned
They do alone, and far away. Or do they?
Better to breathe shared warmth, and yet decay
Than linger forlorn, forsworn, astray.
Pillowed upon love’s ripening breast?
No — invested, blessed by shared bequest
We stardust sprouts, each with this cosmos in our chest.
- Tom Tordillo, 2022
If you’ve never heard John Keats’ “Bright Star” read out loud, drop what you’re doing and listen to some renditions:
- Tom O’Bedlam — gravelly gravitas
- Christopher Naylor — Shakespearean panache
- Tom Hiddleston — Shakespearean panache + a bit breathy, which seems appropriate for a poem in which breath — or its absence — is central. Loki reads poetry well.
- Alan Muñoz — watch and just try not to smile. This world needs more readers of poetry on its streets and freeways.
You’re welcome.
Been a few years since I pondered “‘Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art,’” a Shakespearean sonnet by Keats. Last time around, I didn’t have the ‘benefit’ of Google to guide me to helpful passages suggesting things like the following:
This poem talks about eternity. The lyrical voice makes an emphasis on the importance of the figure of the star…
Source: Poemanalysis, the self-described “Experts in Poetry”
A corner of my soul screams upon reading this. Will tens of thousands of students — some lazy, some scared — Google this poem to ask “what does this mean?” — then just accept the first results? Blech.
Keats, struggling to breathe as tuberculosis cut short his final days, pondered the possibilities of love and hope, certain his love could not endure. He knew he wasn’t ‘steadfast’ like a star. He wanted to love. He suspected that his love would be cut short quite soon.
So he crafted a sonnet. Which has endured. Like a steadfast star, at least, so long as we read poetry and keep the flame burning.
Too often, when we look to the meaning of a poem, we seek to understand the words, rather than simply letting connections grow organically.
Keats’ poem expresses his yearning to be ‘steady’ (BTW, there’s an excellent substack by that name…) — but not alone.
“Nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite”? An Eremite is a sort of religious hermit purifying himself through seclusion (yes, I needed to Google that); the reference to ablutions is also a cleaning ritual intended to purify oneself for prayer.
Contrasts that with a troglodyte — a hermit who enters seclusion (usually a cave) not for the sake of purification, but for the sake of imposing their judgment on the evils in the rest of the world. Both exiles (“deportees”). But not the same sort of exile.
A knight errant is also a sort of self-imposed exile, supposedly seeking to fulfil a quest or some definite purpose. But a blighted knight? Not good in a fight.
Keats spent many months on the Isle of Wight composing some of his greatest works. I imagine these three outcasts spending a cold night there, huddling together. Sharing warmth.
“The stars don’t shine, they burn.” Yes, stolen from Encanto.
Keats thought of stars as ‘steadfast’ — fixed in place, but they’re not. He thought of stars as lonely, pure, distant, but could never have conceived that he was in fact stardust — that his every breath is oxygen generated by some cosmic phenomenon. We breathe the stars. They burn, and by their burning, we have warmth to share while we are on this world.
And when we are not on this world? With our breath, we may leave behind something worthy — maybe a poem. “Bright Star” is a gift worth cherishing.
