Jerusha pried me out of my office to see "Bright Star" on Saturday afternoon, and it was quite lovely. Every frame of this movie is so beautiful, every word of the script so meticulously crafted...it momentarily displaced my almost unshakable hatred for the Regency period. (All that standing on ceremony at the expense of practicality and compassion makes me want to smack somebody.) Check it out. With Kleenex.
Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast
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,
Pillowed 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 in death.
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