This is a movie directed by Jane Campion and based on the love story of poet John Keats and Fanny Brawne. John Keats was 23 when they met. He died 2 years later. The deep affection the 2 of them shared is brilliantly portrayed in this film. I was captured and held hostage from the beginning as a wooden needle was fed through the fabric by the hand of Fanny Brawne. It wasn't until the credits were complete that I could speak a word. This film is magnificent, a visual masterpiece and a most treasured love story.
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.
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
