[i]
LETTERS
OF JOHN KEATS TO
FANNY BRAWNE
[ii]
Where wert thou mighty Mother, when he lay,
When thy Son lay, pierced by the shaft which flies
In darkness?
[iii]
by Joseph Severn 28 Jany 1821, 3 O’Clock morng
London. Reeves & Turner 1878.
[iv]
LETTERS OF JOHN KEATSTO FANNY BRAWNEWRITTEN IN THE YEARSMDCCCXIX AND MDCCCXXAND NOW GIVEN FROMTHE ORIGINAL MANUSCRIPTSWITH INTRODUCTIONAND NOTES BYHARRY BUXTON FORMAN
LONDON REEVES & TURNER
196 STRAND MDCCCLXXVIII
[All rights reserved]
[v]
NOTE.
There is good reason to thinkthat the lady to whom the followingletters were addressed did not, towardsthe end of her life, regardtheir ultimate publication as unlikely;and it is by her family thatthey have been entrusted to theeditor, to be arranged and preparedfor the press.
The owners of these letters reserveto themselves all rights ofreproduction and translation.
[vi]
[vii]
 TO JOSEPH SEVERN, ROME.
The happy circumstance that thefifty-seventh year since you watched atthe death-bed of Keats finds you stillamong us, makes it impossible to inscribeany other name than yours infront of these letters, intimately connectedas they are with the decline of the poet’slife, concerning the latter part of whichyou alone have full knowledge.
It cannot be but that some of the letterswill give you pain,—and notably the threewritten when the poet’s face was alreadyturned towards that land whither youaccompanied him, whence he knew therewas no return for him, and where you[viii]still live near the hallowed place of hisburial. All who love Keats’s memorymust share such pain in the contemplationof his agony of soul. But you wholove him having known, and we who lovehim unknown except by faith in what iswritten, must alike rejoice in the goodhap that has preserved, for our betterknowledge of his heart, these vivid andvaried transcripts of his inner life duringhis latter years,—must alike be content totake the knowledge with such alloy ofpain as the hapless turn of events renderedinevitable.
On a memorable occasion it was saidof you by a great poet and prophet that,had he known of the circumstances ofyour unwearied attendance at the death-bed,he should have been tempted to addhis “tribute of applause to the more solidrecompense which the virtuous man finds[ix]in the recollection of his own motives;”and he uttered the wish that the “unextinguishedSpirit” of Keats might “pleadagainst Oblivion” for your name. Wereany such plea needed, the Spirit to preferit, then unextinguished, is now known forinextinguishable; and                        
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