" The sea cleanses; the snow hides and disguises. What?.
Before moving on we might also note that by Keats's time people no longer used "thou" (or "thee," or "thy") in ordinary speech. Like us, they said "you." So when Keats says "thou," he's being deliberately archaic--trying to make his language, perhaps, more "poetic" and Elizabethan.
In his ninth line, Keats provides what in traditional Italian sonnets was called a "turn"--in this case from what he doesn't envy to what he does.
No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,.
Pillow"d upon my fair love's ripening breast,.
To feel for ever its sweet swell and fall,.
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,.
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,.
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
The "no" sums up what he's rejecting; the "yet" introduces what he desires. We might note than in these six lines we find several repeated words: "still" (four times), "ever" (three times), "sweet" (twice). The repetition of "still" and "ever" seems particularly to underscore Keats's central theme: the desire to achieve a timeless, changeless state, like that of the star.
But in some ways the language keeps undermining this theme. "Unchangeable" is a word that inevitably reminds us of its opposite, "change." The breast is "ripening"--in a state of development. Why not "ripe," already developed? Couldn't Keats find a less changeable word? The "swell and fall" of the breast may recall the moving waters: the world the star sees is an ever-moving, restless world. And what about "unrest"? This would usually suggest restlessness, perhaps worried discontent. But here, coupled with "sweet," Keats seems to mean it to repeat "awake forever"--a nice, tranquil state. Again, though, the language seems to be sabotaging the explicit message.
The rough picture, though, is clear enough. If Keats were as steadfast as the star, he could lie awake forever, his head pillowed on the breast of his fair love, while the fair love (apparently) sleeps forever, her breast forever swelling and falling.
