Quote#Nature
Bright star! would I were stedfast as thou art —
Quote byJohn Keats · 1795–1821
Commonly attributed — not confirmed in an authoritative edition. Cited on Wikiquote to: "Bright Star" (1819).
English (original)
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.
— John Keats
More from John Keats
But were there ever any Writh'd not of passed joy? The feel of not to feel it, When there is none to heal it, Nor numbed sense to steel it, Was never said in rhyme.
It keeps eternal whisperings around Desolate shores, and with its mighty swell Gluts twice ten thousand Caverns, till the spell Of Hecate leaves them their old shadowy sound.
My spirit is too weak — mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagin'd pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die Like a sick Eagle looking at the sky.
In drear-nighted December, Too happy, happy tree, Thy branches ne'er remember Their green felicity.
Sweet are the pleasures that to verse belong, And doubly sweet a brotherhood in song.
then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.