A Little Keats On This Fake Holiday

Hello,
On this horrid fake holiday, commonly known as Valentine's Day, my thoughts turned to my fave doomed romance of the moment: John Keats and Fanny Brawne. These two met in November 1818, when she was 18 and he was 22, and fell in love while walking the Hampstead Heath. Three years later he was dead from tuberculosis. I've cracked a copy of their letters and they are amazing.


Now I love poetry because it forces you slow down and luxuriate in the experience. Poetry is not read to be figured out like a math problem. It is about how words can create a sensual experience. It's meant to provoke an emotional response. This is becoming more and more important in an age where we are feeling more disconnected. If you have to buy a Hallmark card to express your feelings towards another person, well then...

Alright I'll stop, but here's a gift to my small readership. Enjoy.

Bright Star

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 so live ever — or else swoon to death.
--John Keats, written in 1819, first published 1838

Now that's love.

Have a fine week! Book Slave.