cf. photograph by Felix Russell-Saw via Unsplash (edited digital collage)
“Keats, walk a hundred yards over the rim”
Keats,
leave the Piazza di Spagna
walk a hundred yards over the rim
I have your penicillin
I won’t let you go
there are more poems to write
and she is still waiting for you
— J.S.
(cf. “The Twilight Zone”, Season 2, Episode 23, 1961)
O SOVEREIGN power of love! O grief! O balm!
All records, saving thine, come cool, and calm,
And shadowy, through the mist of passed years:
For others, good or bad, hatred and tears
Have become indolent; but touching thine,
One sigh doth echo, one poor sob doth pine,
One kiss brings honey-dew from buried days.
The woes of Troy, towers smothering o’er their blaze,
Stiff-holden shields, far-piercing spears, keen blades,
Struggling, and blood, and shrieks—all dimly fades
Into some backward corner of the brain;
Yet, in our very souls, we feel amain
The close of Troilus and Cressid sweet.
Hence, pageant history! hence, gilded cheat!
Swart planet in the universe of deeds!
Wide sea, that one continuous murmur breeds
Along the pebbled shore of memory!…
— Book II
LIFE Magazine, 1966
I would never see any thing but Pleasure in your eyes, love on your lips, and Happiness in your steps…
— Letter from Keats to Fanny Brawne, July, 1819
LIFE, 1965
…as he lay trying desperately to put poetry, ambition, and Fanny Brawne out of his mind, suddenly an early thrush had appeared…
Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats
“More Than a Feeling” – Boston
One hand she press’d upon that aching spot
Where beats the human heart, as if just there,
Though an immortal, she felt cruel pain…
Keats, “The Fall of Hyperion”
cf. Antonio Gai, “Meleager” (1735) and Mathew Brady’s studio, “Unidentified Man” (ca. 1860)
cf. photograph by Felix Russell-Saw via Unsplash
“Keats, walk a hundred yards over the rim”
Keats,
leave the Piazza di Spagna
walk a hundred yards over the rim
I have your penicillin
I won’t let you go
there are more poems to write
and she is still waiting for you
—J.S.
(cf. “The Twilight Zone”, Season 2, Episode 23, 1961)
cf. video by klimkin via Pixabay
These days were filled with puzzlement, with thoughts of the hopes of the past, of the changes that life brings, of the whole “Burden of the Mystery” — the phrase that had meant so much to him for so long. And the burden was greater now than any he had ever experienced before…
—Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats
“Fire And Rain” by James Taylor
Southworth & Hawes, “Classroom in the Emerson School…” (detail) (ca. 1850)
Away! away! for I will fly to thee,
Not charioted by Bacchus and his pards,
But on the viewless wings of Poesy,
Though the dull brain perplexes and retards:
Already with thee! tender is the night,
And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne,
Cluster’d around by all her starry Fays;
But here there is no light,
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown
Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways.
—Keats, Ode to a Nightingale (excerpt)
But when I face the light
Somehow it all seems right…
“Summer in Style” exhibition, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, June 17, 1960
“…her daughter senior is I think beautiful and elegant, graceful, silly, fashionable and strange…”
—First mention of Fanny Brawne by John Keats (letter to George Keats, December 16, 1818)
cf. piano photograph by Free-Photos via Pixabay (edited collage)
Frequently he held in his hand a little present that Fanny Brawne had given him — a small, oval, white carnelian. It was the only tangible thing left to remind him of their engagement; for he would still not have her letters opened. Words struck home to him too powerfully.
—Walter Jackson Bate, John Keats
Elton John – “Love Lies Bleeding”
John Sapiro 