Bright Star
John Keats, 1838
Keats’s sonnet addressed to a star, wishing he were as steadfast as it is, so as to lie for ever beside the woman he loves.
Bright star, would I were steadfast 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 taskOf pure ablution round earth’s human shoresOr gazing on the new soft fallen maskOf snow upon the mountains and the moors:No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,Pillow’d 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 to death.