In Poetry and Film: Bright star! would I were steadfast as thou art
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,
Pillowed upon my fair love’s ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever — or else swoon to death.
Recently, we saw the Jane Campion movie, Bright Star, the story about the love affair between the English 19th c poet, John Keats, and the young Fanny Brawne. We can highly recommend the movie (and advise taking along a supply of tissues) as well as the Andrew Motion University of Chicago biography of Keats, which we quote in a paragraph below:
"Keats finished Bright Star knowing that one kind of steadfastness had gone, and another kind had yet to be confirmed. On 18 October, twelve days before his twenty-fourth birthday, he finally asked Mrs. Dilke to let Fanny know that he was returning to live with Brown. The following day, he told her himself, asking soon afterwards that their 'understanding' should now become a formal arrangement, and probably giving her a garnet ring. It was a momentous decision, but they did their best to keep it secret, and agreed that Fanny should not wear the ring in public. They had several reasons. Keats knew that he could not afford to get married in the foreseeable future. He also realised that Mrs. Brawne did not approve. She still liked Keats, but understood that his prospects were dismal, and hoped that the plan would 'go off' in due course. Moreover, he distrusted the reaction of his family and friends — rightly, as it turned out." What follows below is from the book by Horace Elisha Scudder, The complete poetical works and letters of John Keats:"The passion which he conceived for Miss Brawne rapidly mounted into a dominant place, and it is one of the marks of Keats's deeper nature, not disclosed to his friends, intimate as he was with them, that for the two years which intervened before he left England a dying man, he carried this passion as a sort of vulture gnawing at his vitals, concealed for the most part, though not wholly. Some overt expression it found, as in the ' Ode to Fanny,' the ' Lines to Fanny,' and the verses addressed to the same person beginning: —
'I cry your pity — mercy — love, ay love,'
"and it may be traced, with little doubt, in those poems which emphasize his moods, such as the ' Ode to Melancholy ' and the sonnet beginning: —
'Why did I laugh to-night?' and that also beginning: —
'The day is gone, and all its sweets are gone.' "
Janet Patterson, the costume designer and production designer for Bright Star, had a number of her creations for The Portrait of a Lady on display at the Allentown Art Museum exhibit, Fashion in Film. She has received three Oscar nominations for her work in films. The exhibit is included in the magazine, Threads, For People Who Love to Sew. The opening scenes for Bright Star begin with Fanny sewing one of her many outfits, which is joy to see. Rarely do we see women in film or on television employing a skill that is now overlooked by the media. And it piques the interest to refer to a triple-pleated mushroom collar, doesn't it?
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