Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art— 
     Not in lone splendor 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 steadfast, still unchangeable,  
     Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,  
 To feel forever its soft fall and swell,