Time for a movie: Bright Star

The romantic poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne from the drama Bright Star, based on the three-year romance between 19th century poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne, which was cut short by Keats' untimely death at age 25.

Bright star.


to Fanny Brawne.                      

"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, Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art–

Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,

And so live ever–or else swoon to death. "

-John Keats-

The sonnet is considered one of Keats's loveliest and most paradoxical.

The speaker of the poem wishes he were as eternal as a star that keeps watch like a sleepless, solitary, and religious hermit over the "moving waters" and the "soft-fallen mask / Of snow." But while he longs for this unchanging state, he does not wish to exist by himself, in "lone splendor." Rather, he longs to be "Awake for ever" and "Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast." Unfortunately, these two desires—to experience love and to be eternal— do not go together. To love, he must be human, and therefore not an unchanging thing like the star...

Watch the official movie trailer.

Ang.