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John Keats

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
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.

About the poet

John KeatsJohn Keats
1795-1821

 
By the same poet
On first looking into Chapman's Homer
The Realm of Fancy
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode to Psyche
To Autumn
Ode on Melancholy
Fragment of an Ode to Maia
Bards of Passion and of Mirth
Stanzas
La Belle Dame sans Merci
When I have Fears that I may cease to be
To Sleep
 
Related books
John Keats at amazon.co.uk

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