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 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,
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.
- John Keats