“I
almost wish we were butterflies
and liv'd but three summer days -
three
such days with you
I could fill with more delight than fifty common
years
could ever contain.”
John Keats
| Love Letters and Poems of John Keats to Fanny Brawne |
John Keats:
I had such a dream last night. I was floating above the trees with my
lips connected to those of a beautiful figure, for what seemed like an
age. Flowery treetops sprung up beneath us and we rested on them with
the lightness of a cloud.
Fanny Brawne:
Who was the figure?
John Keats:
I must have had my eyes closed because I can't remember.
Fanny Brawne:
And yet you remember the treetops.
John Keats:
Not so well as I remember the lips.
Fanny Brawne:
Whose lips? Were they my lips?
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.
John Keats
BrightStar Necklace: Melania Buhalakis
