[696] Last Sonnet

Guest poem submitted by Anustup Datta, <Anustup.Datta@>:

Bright Star, would I were steadfast 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 priest-like 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,
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

Of course, this one needs no introduction. I thought of this sonnet, which I
had read and loved in school, when reading "The more loving one" by Auden.
This is a beautiful love poem, and I agree with you that Keats is the most
"natural" poet of the language - whatever he wrote became poetry. Here, the
imagery in the octet is purely Romantic - especially "The moving waters at
their priest-like task/Of pure ablution round earth's human shores"; but the
sestet turns the focus inward and makes it beautifully tender and intimate -
the poet looking at the sleeping form of his beloved and wishing he could
capture the moment forever. Not a startlingly original emotion, nor by any
means a unique conceit, but perfectly and gracefully executed.

Anustup.

[Links]

"The More Loving One", W. H. Auden, Poem #618

Other Keats poems:

"On First Looking Into Chapman's Homer", Poem #12
"La Belle Dame Sans Merci", Poem #182
"Ode to a Nightingale", Poem #316
"Why did I laugh tonight? No voice will tell", Poem #33
"To Mrs Reynolds' Cat", Poem #575

From: "Louise Linehan" <louiselinehan@>