Also, today is the birthday of the English Romantic poet, John Keats, who died in his early 20s after having written some of the more beautiful short poems in the language, including this sonnet, "When I Have Fears," which expresses an emotion many of us are familiar with -- the fear that death will come before we have acccomplished all that we hope:
When I have fears that I may cease to beA very lovely movie made last year called Bright Star was about Keats and his lover, Fanny Brawne. It's worth a look.
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.
he died in rome, anthony burgess wrote about his last year there, ABBA is the title of the novel
ReplyDelete