John Keats's English sonnet "Bright Star" and Robert Frost's "Choose Something like a Star" underlines their desire of becoming as steadfast as a star. Although their approaches in expressing their desires are similar, they each have different reasoning for their yearning for the star's steadfastness quality.
Both poets praise the star's glorified status. John Keats's sonnet refers to the start as a "lone splendor" and an "Eremite" which underlines the star's solitude. Robert Frost alludes to the Eremite star in Keats's poem and grants the star its loftiness, which emphasizes the star's nobility, pride, and greatness. The star's solitude and nobility underlines its elevated status. Like a hero, it is alone as it stands against the world in solitude yet it still is given the characteristics of a proud and righteous being. With the use of personification, the steadfast star is contrasted with the ever changing world. The star is personified in Keats's sonnet, given the ability of "watching" the world "patiently," and "sleeplessly." The star watches the water on the earth, cleansing the earth's shores as it also gazes on the snow in which masks the mountains and moors. Frost gave the star the ability to also watch the world from above. The star is seems to be untouchable in Frost's poem where it watches the mob being swayed, yet it does even stoop from its sphere. With the world changing below it, the star is still steadfast and unchanging emphasizing the star's unfaltering quality.
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Though both Keats and Frost use allusions, they emphasize different thoughts. .
Keats uses religious allusions such as referring to water as an entity with its "priest-like task of ablution." In other words, the priest like task is a task of cleansing, purifying the shores of the earth and renewing them. "The new soft fallen mask of snow" that covers the mountains and the moors act the same way as the water does, it covers the land of danger and distaste with a pure white mask.
