Bright Star - The film

I think I had heard rumblings that someone was making a movie out of the John Keats-Fanny Brawne romance. Not only is this true, but check out the review by A. O. Scott: "Keats and His Beloved in an Ode to Hot English Chastity." Great title. And here's the sonnet, which speaks so beautifully for itself...


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.

1819