Bright Star

by John Keats (1795-1821)

Bright star, were I as stedfast as though art -
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart
Like nature's patient, sleepless Emerite,
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 forever its soft fall and swell,
Awake forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.