Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscriptsKeats, John
General
Letters of John Keats to Fanny Brawne: Written in the years MDCCCXIX and MDCCCXX and now given from the original manuscripts
Keats, John
Brawne, Fanny, 1800-1865 -- Correspondence; Keats, John, 1795-1821 -- Correspondence; Poets, English -- 19th century -- Correspondence
Dearest Fanny, I shall send this the moment you return. They
say I must remain confined to this room for some time. The
consciousness that you love me will make a pleasant prison of
the house next to yours. You must come and see me frequently:
this evening, without fail—when you must not mind about my
speaking in a low tone for I am ordered to do so though I _can_
speak out.
Yours ever sweetest love.—
J. KEATS.
turn over
Perhaps your Mother is not at home and so you must wait till
she comes. You must see me tonight and let me hear you promise
to come tomorrow.
Brown told me you were all out. I have been looking for the
stage the whole afternoon. Had I known this I could not have
remain’d so silent all day.
XI.
My dearest Girl,
If illness makes such an agreeable variety in the manner of
your eyes I should wish you sometimes to be ill. I wish I had
read your note before you went last night that I might have
assured you how far I was from suspecting any coldness. You
had a just right to be a little silent to one who speaks so
plainly to you. You must believe—you shall, you will—that I
can do nothing, say nothing, think nothing of you but what
has its spring in the Love which has so long been my pleasure
and torment. On the night I was taken ill—when so violent a
rush of blood came to my Lungs that I felt nearly suffocated—I
assure you I felt it possible I might not survive, and at that
moment thought of nothing but you. When I said to Brown “this
is unfortunate”[38] I thought of you. ’Tis true that since
the first two or three days other subjects have entered my
head.[39] I shall be looking forward to Health and the Spring
and a regular routine of our old Walks.
Your affectionate
J. K.
XII.
My sweet love, I shall wait patiently till tomorrow before I
see you, and in the mean time, if there is any need of such
a thing, assure you by your Beauty, that whenever I have at
any time written on a certain unpleasant subject, it has been
with your welfare impress’d upon my mind. How hurt I should
have been had you ever acceded to what is, notwithstanding,
very reasonable! How much the more do I love you from the
general result! In my present state of Health I feel too much
separated from you and could almost speak to you in the words
of Lorenzo’s Ghost to Isabella
“Your Beauty grows upon me and I feel
A greater love through all my essence steal.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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