Ma's Literary Corner

Picked up another $.89 paperback at Goodwill, Saturday.

John Keats Lyric Poems.

Here is my favorite...

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd grain'
When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

To think what Keats could have written had he not died of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five.
 

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