John Severn believed this to be the final poem Keats' ever composed, completing the final draft on board the ship Maria Crowther, travelling to Rome, from where the very sick Keats would never return. I hope you enjoy the reading. The music is from The Planets by Gustav Holst

My aim is to breathe life into our rich literary heritage, and to add to the tradition through my own writing. Your support helps me to continue.

My poetry collections 'Poems for Susan' (2020) and 'Scarlet Land' (2021) are available from my shop: [ Ссылка ]

'While poetry such as this can still be written, civilisation shall not sink, the great battle of the mind shall not be lost, and the rough beast will - along with the passionate intensity of the worst - finally be overcome".

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“Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art” by John Keats

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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