THE REASON FOR THE NAME

The Inspiration for the name of the blog is this Poem by the writer John Keats. Who in my opinion was the single greatest writer the world has produced. His entire body of work was created in just about four years and his life was ended at the young age of twenty-five. This poem of his is my single favorite piece of writing ever put down on paper (the pre-Bush US Constitution was pretty awesome too) and If your interested in the lives of artists, his is a fascinating story. For a long time this poem was believed erroneously to be his last sonnet. When an autopsy was conducted immediately upon his death the doctor presiding said his organs were jelly and that he should have been dead three months earlier. The romantic notion was of him living purely of his own will for his last days and only finally succumbing to his illness,TB, when the last words were written, with Keats then victoriously meeting death on his own terms. This is not what the facts seem to imply but I still like the story. To people who read his work it was easy imagine someone who so forcefully and determinedly sought out the themes with which he created his writing could just as easily force liquefied internal organs to keep going in order to finish the following piece. James Leese


BRIGHT STAR, WOULD I WERE STEDFAST AS THOU ART

By John Keats

Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art---
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite,
The moving waters at their priestlike task
Of pure ablution round earth's human shores,
Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
No---yet still stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
And so live ever---or else swoon in death.

1819