Bright Star

I have more to say about Bright Star. Yes, John Keats' decisions did annoy me - see yesterday's post - but the story of his love for Fanny Brawne is also incredibly romantic.

This is the poem he wrote for her (she was his bright star).

Bright Star

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 mask
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 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.
- John Keats

All I have to say is that it is no wonder she was never able to get over him after he died.