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, sleepnless 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 and the moors -

No - yet still steadfast, still unchangeable,

Pillowed upon my fair love s ripening breast,

To feel for ever its soft swell and fall

Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever - or else swoon to death.