Bright Star

Check out the star shape in the middle of this flower. The title of this post also refers to the film Bright Star, which I just watched--it's about the love between John Keats and Fanny Brawne; unfortunately, as you probably know, Keats died at age 25 of tuberculosis. They couldn't marry because he was basically penniless and she had no dowry; he died thinking himself to be a failure as a poet. The film has lots of shots of the breathtaking English countryside, as well as lovely clothes (I adore women's dresses during that time period, which is around the same time Jane Austen was writing).

Here is Keats's sonnet "Bright Star":

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 for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever—or else swoon to death.