"Bright Star"

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,
Pillowed 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 in death. 

-- John Keats, 1819

Usually I'm not into poetry, but for some reason I have a fondness for Keats' work. This sonnet is especially resonant. He writes this as he is dying of tuberculosis, while traveling to Italy with his friend Joseph Severn. He died at the tender age of 25 and is buried in Rome.

The speaker of the poem (presumably, Keats) wishes he were as eternal as a star that keeps watch like a Eremite (a religious hermit) over the waters and now. But while he longs for this unchanging state, he does not wish to exist by himself. Instead he wishes to be immortal and loved. Unfortunately, these two desires—to experience love and to be eternal—are paroxical. To love, he must be human, not an unchanging thing like the star. He acknowledges this near the end of the poem. He wishes to "live ever" in love, but to be in love means to be human, which means that the love he feels for the woman will change and eventually die. The only other possibility he can imagine is to to die. This could 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.

Humans cannot be steadfast and immortal and love is an essential part of being human. When given the choice, Keats chooses to be human. I know that it is a love sonnet technically, but I agree with the sentiment that it is better to be mortal and loved, than immortal and alone.