Poem from 'An Inconvenient Truth'?

Question

I went and saw a slideshow presentation of Al Gore's 'An Inconvenient Truth' and at the end were early photographs of Earth from space, and a really wonderful poem was read about one of the photos featuring Earth as a speck. Does anyone know what this poem might be / who the author was? I'd really like to know!

Answer 1

Was it Keats, or Hopkins?

Bright Star!

Would I Were Steadfast as Thou Art

Bright star! Would I were steadfast as thou art-

Not in lone splendor 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 forever 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.

John Keats

Here to in this poem is mans insignificance portrayed. The
bright star, lit through the ages, is not affected by the
movement of the seas, the tides of storms, nor the acts of
man. The love the man in the poem expresses for this woman
is vacillating and exits for just a brief time in the eyes
of the star. The man in the poem wants to be as steadfast
as the star; to forever be able to hear her sweet breath
and feel her "ripening breast." His wish is to live
forever, to take in these wonders, or die.
**
Heaven-Haven

I have desired to go

Where springs not fail,

To fields where flies no sharp and sided hail

And a few lilies blow.

And I have asked to be

Where no storms come,

Where the green swell is in the havens dumb,

And out of the swing of the sea.

Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)

In Heaven-Haven, Hopkins not only prays for a day when he
can be free of the physical stresses of the world, but also
the emotional pains. Life is filled with turbulent storms
of anger and despair. Hopkins sees Heaven (death) as an
escape from the harsh "sharp and sided" reality of life.
Life to Hopkins is a sea. One moment a man is rich and
happy and the next fate has thrown him a curveball and sent
him to the poorhouse. There is no escaping the acrid
aspects of life, so Hopkins turns to death.


Good search and good luck.