John Keats

Sonnet To George Keats: Written In Sickness

Brother belov'd if health shall smile again, Upon this wasted form and fever'd cheek: If e'er returning vigour bid these weak And languid limbs their gladsome strength regain, Well may thy brow the placid glow retain Of sweet content and thy pleas'd eye may speak The conscious self applause, but should I seek To utter what this heart can feel, Ah! vain Were the attempt!  Yet kindest friends while o'er My couch ye bend, and watch with tenderness The being whom your cares could e'en restore, From the cold grasp of Death, say can you guess The feelings which these lips can ne'er express; Feelings, deep fix'd in grateful memory's store. 'This sonnet is from a transcript in the handwriting of George Keats, which bears the date 1819; but I am disposed to think this date must have been wrongly affixed from memory. The entire absence of high poetic feeling indicates a time of utter physical prostration; and I should imagine that the sonnet might possibly have been written in February 1820, when Keats was still so ill as to be forbidden to write, and that it might have been sent to George with the announcement of the illness; but it seems likelier that it was composed later on in the year, in reply to some letter written by George on receiving hat news -- a letter in which reply the younger brother might have reproached himself for leaving the elder, low in health and funds, and for rushing back to America to mend his own fortunes. ' ~ Poetical Works of John Keats, ed. H. Buxton Forman, Crowell publ. 1895.