Keats's "Bright Star!" sonnet

Book/Work

Prof Andrew Stauffer

Keats’s “Bright Star!” sonnet

Arafat Kazi

Plymouth and Devonport Version	LLR Version
Title: Sonnet	Title: Keats’s Last Sonnet
Dated: 1819	Dated: 1820
Date published: 27 September 1819	Date published: 1848
Published in The Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal	Published in The Life, Letters and Literary Remains of John Keats
Line 1: “Bright”	Line 1: “B_RIGHT”
Line 1: “stedfast”	Line 1: “steadfast”
Line 1 ends with an exclamation!	Line 1 ends with an em-dash—
Line 2: amid	Line 2: aloft
Line 2 ends with no punctuation	Line 2 ends with a comma
Line 3: Not watching	Line 3: And watching
Line 4: nature	Line 4: Nature
Line 4: nature’s devout etc	Line 4: Nature’s patient
Line 4: eremite	Line 4: Eremite
Line 5: morning waters	Line 5: moving waters
Line 6 ends with a semicolon	Line 6 ends with a comma
Line 7: Or,	Line 7: Or
Line 9: No;	Line 9: No—
Line 9: stedfast	Line 9: steadfast
Line 9: ends with a period.	Line 9: ends with a comma,
Line 10: Cheek pillow’d	Line 10: Pillow’d (no cheek)
Line 10: love’s white ripening breast	Line 10: fair love’s ripening breast
Line 11: To touch	Line 11: To feel
Line 11: the words “for ever” have commas around them, i.e. “To touch, for ever,”	Line 11: the words “for ever” have no commas
Line 11: “its warm sink and swell”	Line 11: “soft fall and swell”
Line 12: the words “for ever” have commas around them, i.e. “Awake, for ever,”	Line 12: the words “for ever” have no commas
Line 13: To hear, to feel	Line 13: Still, still to hear
Line 14: Half-passionless,	Line 14: And so live forever—
Line 14: the caesura comes earlier and signified by a comma	Line 14: the caesura is in the middle and is signified by an em-dash
Line 14: and so swoon	Or else swoon
Line 14: swoon on to death	Line 14: swoon to death
No alternate reading	Alternate last line: Half-passionless, and so swoon on to death.

The two versions of Keats’s “Bright Star!” sonnet, while similar enough to be recognized as the same poem, are also different enough in their sensibilities and nuances to make the choice an aesthetic and therefore difficult one. As for provenance, the LLR version purports to be from an 1820 manuscript—i.e., a year later than the Plymouth version, and it can be assumed that the 1820 manuscript was of a revision and not necessarily an alternate attempt that Keats meant to be an exercise. The problem with the two poems is that they are just different enough to make the choice between them an aesthetic one: which does the editor prefer, or believe that readers should read? Which is more “Keatsian”?

The fact that the LLR version is aware of the earlier iteration, and that the vice-versa is not true, might help the modern book historian. If the modern book historian is also a literary critic, Allah save his soul. I myself am neither, but aspire to both capacities at a distant golden future. As such, I prefer the second version, which has more mature punctuation and seems more “Keatsian” in the sense that it has none of the overt sexuality of the Plymouth version, but has subtler emotional overtones.

Adjectives are cheap, however, and the only defenses I can offer for the LLR version are literary judgments. Here they are, naked and bulleted (with spellings Americanized except in direct quotes):

“Aloft” in Line 2 more befits splendor, which should not by rights hang “amid” the night. If splendor hangs “aloft” the night, it becomes like the heady song of the Nightingale; if it hangs “amid” the night, it becomes a drunk Childe Harold reveling with wassailers of low degree.
“And watching” makes more sense than “not watching,” since for all the inaction of the poem the poet is still actively engaged in feeling and inactively watching.
Line 4: while capitalizing Nature and Eremite makes only a slight difference, “patient” is an altogether more appropriate adjective than “devout”, since “devout” connotes activity, passion, etc, while patient just sits around waiting for eternity.
“Morning waters” is obviously a misreading.
The removal of the comma after “Or” in Line 7 makes it flow easier. On the flip side, the em-dash after “No” in Line 9 makes the reader pause. This is the best example of how the improved punctuation in the LLR version makes a striking difference; from the tepid semi-colon we get the thundering silence of the em-dash.
Line 10 in the Plymouth version is sexually charged, with the poet’s cheek pillow’d upon a white ripening breast. The LLR version removes the cheek (in more ways than one!) and makes the white ripening breast the poet’s “fair love’s ripening breast.” The upshot is that “fair” describes both the love that the poet feels and the object of his love, and it may be literally taken to also describe her “ripening breast” without being as blatantly suggestive as the Plymouth version.
“To feel” in Line 11 of the LLR version has the same supporting arguments as “fair” vs. “white”, i.e. it’s subtler, more suggestive and—dare I say it?[1]—Keatsian.
The removal of commas around “for ever” in the LLR version make Line 11 flow better.
My one disagreement with the LLR version is the replacement of “warm sink and swell” with “soft fall and swell”, but even that can be justified: alliteration, less overtly suggestive etc.
The removal of commas around “for ever” in the LLR version make Line 12 flow better, and make the repeating “for ever”s in Lines 11 and 12 less obvious.
“Still, still to hear” in Line 13 (LLR version) is also more observant of the unities of the poem, which is an extremely delicate balance between actively feeling and inactively existing forever, like a pleasant version of Tennyson’s Mariana.
“Half-passionless” is more physical, while “And so live forever” is more metaphysical[2]. Plus, the LLR version gives the reader a choice not only between ending lines, but in its final product of the poem itself between the poet lying there with his love or else swooning to death.