English Poetry II: From Collins to Fitzgerald.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14. |
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| 542. Last Sonnet |
| | | John Keats (1795–1821) |
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| 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, | |
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| The moving waters at their priestlike task | 5 |
| Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores, | |
| Or gazing on the new soft fallen mask | |
| Of snow upon the mountains and the moors:— | |
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| No—yet still steadfast, still unchangeable, | |
| Pillow’d upon my fair Love’s ripening breast | 10 |
| To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, | |
| Awake for ever in a sweet unrest; | |
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| Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, | |
| And so live ever,—or else swoon to death. | |
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