'Is There Another Life?'

Such an opening for a letter to a friend: “The time has not yet come for a pleasant Letter from me.” By the time he writes to his friend Charles Brown on Sept. 30, 1820, Keats had been infected for nearly half his life with the bacillus that would kill him. He is twenty-four and his best poetry has already been written. He has started his final journey, to Rome: “I have many more Letters to write and I bless my stars that I have begun, for time seems to press,--this may be my best opportunity.” In this letter Keats mingles self-pity, frustration at leaving Fanny Brawne, defiance and resolution. I’ve always thought there was something mad, though understandable, about the journey to Rome with Joseph Severn. He asks, rhetorically, sadly:

“Is there another life? Shall I awake and find all this a dream?”

Such questions are no longer academic. The former medical student, the young man who observed post mortems performed on cadavers, asks in vain for hope. Life has never been so precious. Less than five months later he was dead.