bright star, would i were steadfast as thou art, not in line splendor hung aloft in the night and watching, with eternal lids apart, like nature 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 in changeable, pillowed upon my fair love ’ s ripening breast, to feel for ever it ’ s soft fall and well, awake forever in a sweet unrest, still, still, to hear her tender - taken breath, and so live ever, or else swoon to death, 8 k,