Bright Star

Today's poem comes from John Keats. Today's poem is also the title of a Jane Campion movie released last year, starring Ben Whishaw as Keats, and Abbie Cornish as his love interest, Fanny Brawne. It is one of the most beautiful movies I have ever seen; I cannot recommend it enough.

The movie makes the assumption that this poem was written for Fanny, and although it very well could have been, no one knows for sure. The romantic in me is going to assume that it was.

Bright Star

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 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.