Keats to Brawne: letters

rlee

I have two luxuries to brood over in my walks,
Your loveliness and the hour of my death.
O that I could have possession of them both in the same minute.
I never knew before what such a love as you have made me feel was.
I did not believe in it.
But if you will fully love me,
though there may be some fire,
It will not be more than we can bear
When moistened and bedewed with pleasures.
From Bright Star Directed by Campion

rlee

My dearest lady,
I am now at a very pleasant cottage window
Looking onto a beautiful country, with a veiw of sea.
The morning is very fine.
I do not know how elastic my spirit might be,
What pleasure I might have in living here
If the remembrance of you did not weigh so upon me.
Ask yourself, my love, whether you are not very cruel
To have so entrammelled me,
So destroyed my freedom.
For myself,
I know not how to express my devotion to so fair a form.
I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair.
I almost wish we were butterflies and lived but three summer days,
Three such days with you I could fill with more delight
Than 50 common years could ever contain.

rlee

Will you confess this in a letter
You must write immediately and do all you can do console me in it
Make it rich as a draft of poppies to intoxicate me.
Write the softest words and kiss them
That I may at least touch my lips where yours have been.

rlee

I love you more in that I believe you've liked me for my own sake.
I have met with women whom I really think would like to be married to a poem,
To be given away by a novel.

rlee

My sweet girl,
I am living today in yesterday.
I was in a complete fascination all day.
I feel myself at your mercy.
Write me ever so few lines and tell me
You will never forever be less kind to me than yesterday.
You dazzled me.
There is nothing in the world so bright and delicate.
You have absorbed me.
I have a sensation at the present moment as if I was dissolved.

rlee

from Bright Star
Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast
To feel forever its soft swell and fall
Awake forever in a sweet unrest
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath
....
Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art
Not in lone splendor hung aloft the night
....

rlee

My sweet creature, when I send this round,
I shall be in the front parlor,
Watching to see you show yourself for a minute in the garden.
When I look back upon the ecstasies in which I have passed some days
And miseries in their turn,
I wonder the more the beauty which has kept up the spell so fervently.
How horried was the chance of slipping into the ground instead of into your arms.
The difference is amazing, love.

rlee

Do not take the trouble of writing much.
Merely send me my good night to put under my pillow.

rlee

Let me no longer detain you from going to town.
There may be no end to this imprisoning of you.
Perhaps you had better not come before tomorrow evening.
You know our situation.
I am recommended not even to read poetry, much less write it.
I wish I had even a little hope.
I cannot say forget me.
But I would mention that there are impossibilities in the world.

rlee

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has wither'd from the Lake
And no birds sing.
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery's child
Her hair was Long, her foot was light
And her eyes were wild.
I set her on my pacing steed
And nothing else saw all day Long
For sidelong would she bend and sing
A faery's song.
She found me roots of relish sweet
And honey wild, and manna dew
And sure in language strange she said
'I love thee true'
She took me to her elfin grot
And there she wept, and sigh'd full sore.
And there I shut her wild wild eyes
With kisses four.
And there she lulled me asleep
And there I dream'd, ah! woe betide!
The latest dream I ever dream'd
On the cold hill side.