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By John Keats

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.


  • Living
  • Love
  • Nature

Poet Bio

John Keats
John Keats was born in London, where he was raised by a merchant after his father died when he was 10, and his mother died when he was 15. Before Keats’s tragically early death at age 25, he was already celebrated as one of the prominent Romantic poets. He produced some of the most memorable poems of his time, including “Ode on a Grecian Urn” and the epic “Hyperion.” See More By This Poet

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