Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art- Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternall lids apart, Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite, The moving water at their prieslike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the soft-fallen mask Of snow upon the mountains and 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.