“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” is a famous love poem by the British Romantic poet John Keats (1795 – 1821). The poem was either written or revised for Fanny Brawne with whom Keats was secretly engaged to. Would you choose immortality like the bright star or stay human so you can lay upon your lover’s breast and listen to her breathe?
Read an analysis of the poem at PoemAnalysis.
Bright Star
Poem by John Keats
Bright Star! would I were stedfast 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 masque
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 for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever--or else swoon to death.
