The rain increased. Outside it drummed and drummed. Inside it dripped
and dripped.
And as I sat there, upright, to escape the drip from the leaks, I
climbed to a high, crystal-clear state of spirit.
Again I burned through Keats' life as if remembering that it was what I
had myself suffered ... as if suddenly I awoke to the realisation that
_I_ was Keats, re-born in America, a tramp-student in Kansas....
And now Severn, my true, faithful friend, was with me.... Severn, who
had given up his career as painter to be near me in my last days ... we
were on the _Maria Crowther_ ... we were still off the coast of England,
and I had gone ashore for the last touching of my foot on English
soil....
There hung the great, translucent star of evening, at that hushed moment
of twilight, before any other of the stars had come forth....
"Bright star, would I were steadfast 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,..."
The evening star made me dream of immortality and love--my love for
Fanny Brawne....
Now we, Severn and I, were journeying across the country to Rome ...
voyaging, rather, through fields of flowers ... like my procession of
Bacchus in _Endymion_ .
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