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 as he’s thinking and dreaming and living, he lies on the breast of his love; he seeks comfort. There is a mix of childishness and eroticism. ‘Pillow’d’ has connotations of both. His love’s ‘ripening’ breasts suggests immaturity, as if she still physically developing. Or alternatively swollen with sexual desire.