From our Late to the Poet desk

Several weeks ago Michael Dirda wrote a review in the Weekly Standard of John Keats: A New Life by Nicholas Roe. It starts out this way:

Poet of Loss

Dead at 25, Keats is forever the passionate voice.

Oh, for ten years, that I may overwhelm / Myself in poesy.

So wrote the author of  “Sleep and Poetry,” composed in late 1816. Alas, John Keats was allowed only half that time, dying at the age of 25 in 1821.

Is there any more affecting story than his in the annals of English literature? Orphaned at a young age, barely five feet tall (and sensitive about it), and raggedly educated, Keats was nonetheless naturally gregarious and fond of “women, wine, and snuff.” A Londoner through and through, he loved the theater, enjoyed watching boxing matches, and once spent an evening cutting cards for half guineas. This sometimes overidealized poet—so sensitive! so ethereal!—even seems to have been treated for a venereal disease, possibly syphilis.

Which brings us to our Quote o’ the Day:

There’s a blush for won’t and a blush for shan’t— / And a blush for having done it.

Keats did it, alright. And we’re all the richer for it.