Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art by John Keats

Bright Star, Would I were Steadfast as Thou Art

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.

Beautiful imagery and emotion. A link to read more. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/bio/john-keats

On a Dream by John Keats

On a Dream

BY JOHN KEATS

As Hermes once took to his feathers light,

    When lulled Argus, baffled, swoon’d and slept,

So on a Delphic reed, my idle spright

    So play’d, so charm’d, so conquer’d, so bereft

The dragon-world of all its hundred eyes;

    And seeing it asleep, so fled away,

Not to pure Ida with its snow-cold skies,

    Nor unto Tempe where Jove griev’d that day;

But to that second circle of sad Hell,

    Where in the gust, the whirlwind, and the flaw

Of rain and hail-stones, lovers need not tell

    Their sorrows—pale were the sweet lips I saw,

Pale were the lips I kiss’d, and fair the form

I floated with, about that melancholy storm.

I love the language and tempo, read it out loud if only to yourself it is magical.  To read more about him and his poetry there is a link.http://www.poets.org/poet/php/prmPID/66