A joy forever: poetry world prepares to mark bicentenary of John Keats

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2021/feb/19/poetry-world-prepares-to-mark-bicentenary-of-john-keats ^ | 2/19/21 | Alison Flood

[Borges]

Almost 200 years ago, on 23 February 1821, the English poet John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome at the age of 25. “I shall soon be laid in the quiet grave – thank God for the quiet grave,” he told his friend Joseph Severn, in whose arms he died. “I can feel the cold earth upon me – the daisies growing over me – O for this quiet – it will be my first.”

Keats gave instructions for his headstone to be engraved with the words “here lies one whose name was writ in water”, and visitors to Rome’s Protestant cemetery can still make a pilgrimage to see it today. But far from being “writ in water”, Keats’s words continue to echo, with a host of writing and events lined up to mark the 200th anniversary of his death.

[Cinnamontea]

IMO, the best poet ever. And he died at only 25.

[MarvinStinson]

The hare limped trembling through the frozen grass

[MarvinStinson]

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gush’d blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice with piteous bark
Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Half-ignorant, they turn’d an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

[MarvinStinson]

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,

[Cinnamontea]

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn / Among the river sallows...

[Hiddigeigei]

“He has outsoared the shadow of our night; envy and calumny and hate and pain, and that unrest which men miscall delight, can touch him not and torture not again.”

[Pete from Shawnee Mission]

“I want a brighter word than Bright”

“Thou greedy devouring cormorant time!”

“Tall oaks branch charmed by the earnest stars Dream and so dream all night without a stir.”