Sonnet: Written On A Blank Page In Shakespeare's Poems, Facing 'A Lover's Complaint'

    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 priest-like 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.