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, evergreen, Fix’d in his purpose, not for ever in the east, In the green, like evening’s general shining star, Away from the patient silence veils at sea, In the cleared dusk of night.

— Bright Star

• John Keats