Arthur Quiller-Couch, ed. 1919. The Oxford Book of English Verse: 1250–1900.
John Keats. 17951821637. 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 priest-like 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— | |
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, | |
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, | |
And so live ever—or else swoon to death. |