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bright star! would i were 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,
pillowed 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