.
.
Bright star!
Written on a blank, page in Shakespeare's
poems,
facing «A Lover's Complaint»
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 priestlike cask
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 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.
<......................>