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Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts — John Shaqi

Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscriptsKeats, John

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Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts

Name: Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts
Author: Keats, John

Keats, John

Brawne, Fanny, 1800-1865 -- Correspondence; Keats, John, 1795-1821 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence

Letter in so many words—for I am distracted with a thousand
    thoughts. I will imagine you Venus tonight and pray, pray, pray
    to your star like a Heathen.

                      Your’s ever, fair Star,

                                                        JOHN KEATS.

    My seal is mark’d like a family table cloth with my Mother’s
    initial F for Fanny:[28] put between my Father’s initials. You
    will soon hear from me again. My respectful Compliments to your
    Mother. Tell Margaret I’ll send her a reef of best rocks and
    tell Sam[29] I will give him my light bay hunter if he will tie
    the Bishop hand and foot and pack him in a hamper and send him
    down for me to bathe him for his health with a Necklace of good
    snubby stones about his Neck.[30]


IV.

                                          Shanklin, Thursday Night.

                             [_Postmark,_ Newport, 9 August, 1819.]

    My dear Girl,

    You say you must not have any more such Letters as the last:
    I’ll try that you shall not by running obstinate the other
    way. Indeed I have not fair play—I am not idle enough for
    proper downright love-letters—I leave this minute a scene in
    our Tragedy[31] and see you (think it not blasphemy) through
    the mist of Plots, speeches, counterplots and counterspeeches.
    The Lover is madder than I am—I am nothing to him—he has a
    figure like the Statue of Meleager and double distilled fire
    in his heart. Thank God for my diligence! were it not for
    that I should be miserable. I encourage it, and strive not to
    think of you—but when I have succeeded in doing so all day and
    as far as midnight, you return, as soon as this artificial
    excitement goes off, more severely from the fever I am left
    in. Upon my soul I cannot say what you could like me for. I
    do not think myself a fright any more than I do Mr. A., Mr.
    B., and Mr. C.—yet if I were a woman I should not like A. B.
    C. But enough of this. So you intend to hold me to my promise
    of seeing you in a short time. I shall keep it with as much
    sorrow as gladness: for I am not one of the Paladins of old
    who liv’d upon water grass and smiles for years together. What
    though would I not give tonight for the gratification of my
    eyes alone? This day week we shall move to Winchester; for I
    feel the want of a Library.[32] Brown will leave me there to
    pay a visit to Mr. Snook at Bedhampton: in his absence I will
    flit to you and back. I will stay very little while, for as I
    am in a train of writing now I fear to disturb it—let it have
    its course bad or good—in it I shall try my own strength and
    the public pulse. At Winchester I shall get your Letters more
    readily; and it being a cathedral City I shall have a pleasure
    always a great one to me when near a Cathedral, of reading them
    during the service up and down the Aisle.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.

Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts

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