Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art
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- 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.
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