Bright Star

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. - John Keats

Listen to a wonderful reading of this poem by Samuel West at this link.

It is 1818 and John Keats, 23, begins a secret love affair with Fanny Brawne, his next door neighbor. The film, which is coming out in theaters this fall and is set in the Regency era, has received rave reviews, especially for Abbie Cornish. Jane Campion (The Piano), directed.

Click on the link to this movie trailer.

• Review of the film in Rolling Stone
• New York Times Movie Review of Bright Star

Posted by Vic, Jane Austen's World