The Poet Keats

August 21, 1980

He lies. His pillowed features now appear pale and denying above the silent cover, since the whole world and all this knowledge of her, torn from the senses of her lover, fell back again to the unfeeling year. Those who had seen him living saw no trace of his deep unity with all that passes; for these, these valley here, these meadow-grasses, these streams of running water, werem his face. Oh yes, his face was this remotest distance, that seeks him still and woos him in despair; and his mere mask, timidly dying there, tender and open, has no more consistence than broken fruit corrupting in the air. Paris, May-June 1906m "The Poet's Death" from "Selected Works," Vol. II, translated by J. B. Leishman. Copyright (c) The Hogarth Press, Ltd. 1960. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of New Directions Publishing Corp.m