Bright Star by John Keats

Bright Star
by John Keats

Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art -
     Not in lone splendor hung aloft in 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 steadfast, still unchangeable,
     Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still, to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever - or else swoon to death.