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Word Gems
exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity
John Keats
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from https://www.rd.com/list/love-poems/
“Bright Star” by John Keats
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.
One of literary history’s most famous love poems, “Bright Star” was written by English Romantic poet John Keats (1795–1821) and dedicated to his love, Fanny Brawne. The sonnet starts with the narrator admiring a star in the sky for its steadfast brightness and solitude but then admitting he would rather be steadfast in his love, lying with his beautiful lover forever. Keats revised the poem until his last days; shortly after its completion, he tragically died of tuberculosis at just 25 years old.
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