John Keats-Bright Star-Verses

The poem “Bright Star” was one of John Keats's last poems wrote on September 28, 1820, while he was leaving the Isle of Wight, heading for Naples. This poem was dedicating it to his beloved Fanny Brawne.

“Bright Star” is one of Keats’ romantic poems, which both his friend Charles Brown in England and his faithful and last companion Joseph Severn in Italy, agreed to define as the melancholy of the unattainable.

The poem “Bright Star” was first published in 1838, seventeen years after Keats’ death.

Bright star, would I was steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendor 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 forever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.

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