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
“There’s the thrush again…”
Tag: John Keats
Another Lycidas
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)
“Keats, walk a hundred yards over the rim”
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)
“Like a sick eagle looking at the sky.”
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
But when I face the light somehow it all seems right
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…
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”
“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)
The White Carnelian
cf. piano photograph by Free-Photos via Pixabay
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”
