Bright star

From the film Bright Star (2009), about John Keats and Fanny Brawne

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, [hermit]
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 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.


For more on this sonnet and the relationship of Keats with Fanny Brawne, see http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/542409.html and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bright_star,_would_I_were_steadfast_as_thou_art.