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 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 steadfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake forever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever - or else swoon to death.
Five Songs for Tenor and Piano
Song Cycle by Roger Guy Steptoe (b. 1953)
?. Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art  [sung text not yet checked]
Authorship:
- by John Keats (1795 - 1821), no title, written 1819?
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- GER German (Deutsch) (Richard Flatter) , "Letztes Sonett", appears in Die Fähre, Englische Lyrik aus fünf Jahrhunderten, first published 1936
- ITA Italian (Italiano) (Ferdinando Albeggiani) , "Lucente stella, esser potessi come te costante", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]
?. On seeing the Elgin Marbles  [sung text not yet checked]
[My]1 spirit is too weak; mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep Of godlike hardship tells me I must die, Like a sick eagle looking towards the sky. Yet 'tis a gentle luxury to weep, That I have not the cloudy winds to keep Fresh for the opening of the morning's eye. Such dim-conceived glories of the brain Bring round the heart an indescribable feud; So do these wonders a most dizzy pain, That mingles Grecian grandeur with the rude Wasting of old Time -- with a billowy main, A sun, a shadow of a magnitude.
Authorship:
- by John Keats (1795 - 1821), "On seeing the Elgin Marbles for the first time"
See other settings of this text.
Available translations, adaptations or excerpts, and transliterations (if applicable):
- FRE French (Français) (Jean-Pierre Granger) , "En contemplant les marbres d'Elgin pour la première fois", copyright © 2010, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- GER German (Deutsch) (Bertram Kottmann) , "Beim ersten Sehen der Parthenon Friese", copyright © 2013, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
- HUN Hungarian (Magyar) (Tamás Rédey) , copyright © 2015, (re)printed on this website with kind permission
1 Ives: "The"
Researcher for this text: Emily Ezust [Administrator]