John Keats: 31 October 1795–23 February 1821

“Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard, are sweeter”

― John Keats

https://wordsworth.org.uk/blog/2021/02/23/writ-in-water-the-gravestone-of-john-keats/

Melancholy’s lack of zest is written all over his palimpsest: to die at twenty-five to some will hardly seem to have been alive but for Johnny Keats and the footloose Cavaliers poetry, music, art, tears were and are eternal. They eschewed self-pity, held close untold fears.

They tried their best to stay alive in a world without antibiotics, no easy crossing of the river Lethe for him, no seeking out of empty-headed oblivion. He preferred to breathe the clear air of Hampstead heath; for Johnny Keats did not, could not, measure out life in years he sought to rise to the attainment of that rarest of rare orchids, love. What will survive of us. For Johnny Keats and the footloose Cavaliers life was so much more than just the passing of the years.

Keats, the poet-physician, balanced his surface understanding of anatomy with the hidden mysteries of the body. Alchemical intuitions unified body and soul. Intuitions since borne out by the mysteries of quantum physics. Time is such a slippery beast: he writ their poems in water.

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