542. Last Sonnet

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.