Keats & Alchemy

Source
This is not surprising - I found this because I knew to look for it - Keats has always struck me as the "best" of the Romantics, someone who, had he lived, might have been a guiding spirit greater than Wordsworth. Unfortunately, he obtained his influence via the Freemasons, who had already begun to dabble in the darker currents. They had lost the integral medieval tradition that was dealt a death blow by Luther in his effort to Teutonize and stabilize and reform the corruptions of his own day. Like all revolutionary efforts (including our own Founding Fathers), an initial burst of energy and light and truth gave way to an even deeper despair, as another avenue was exhausted and proved a dead end. This can be likened to a subarachnoid hemorrhage, one of whose ominous signs in any patient is a sudden "improvement" & lucidity - the body has deployed all of its intercranial compensating measures and systemic countermeasures in a last ditch effort to lower intercranial pressure from the leaking vasculature. It is a bad sign. In & of itself, a good, but ominous for long term survival. The body's "ace" is a sign that it has its back to the wall. Likewise, many efforts today are doomed for the same reason - good in and of themselves, they nevertheless (if they do not work, and they usually do not, if the underlying problem goes untreated) ultimately place the patient in an even worse position, from which no recovery can be expected. It is telling that Keats died of love - his disease claimed two family members before him, both of whom he cared for. He was a better man than Byron, Shelley, or a host of other "poets". And a better poet. Had he lived (and he does live) he might have hymned a higher note.

In honor of Keats, may he rest in peace, one of the sainted dead, and one who found his way through Purgatory, safe to that far shore.

And Has He Died?

Came he among the whispering wood, or in the golden meads,

Still he holds the cypress crown, which gold Apollo gave.

Walked he in stormy wind about or in the laze of noon,

Yet still he sings the song around, eternal end too soon.

He rose above the blue sky wild and stopped beneath the sun,

The eagle grew his pinions strong yet earth does not outrun.

Others voyaged the ether out or wandered into space,

The psychonauts, dead stars about, are lost unto our race.

False gods may fly like crimson sparks thrown out of Eden’s heat,

Though one took wing, in faithful gyre, halfway the sun to meet.

He melted not, nor smitten blind, but sorrowed in his mind,

His weakened corse you cannot find, in England, green and kind.

In water writ, in Rome bestowed, a man between two worlds,

Forever twixt the sun and sky, his ruddy heart unfurled.

For us, he loved and lost his mind, for us did name our vale,

For us the mansions traced in fate, and young, faced Death’s black gale.

I prayed his soul last Good to find, to early love yet keep,

The answer came the Moon around “long yet so shall I sleep”.

“Until the fickle Fortune bows and Fame is quite forgot,

Until my unconsummate Love unto the Phoenix, wrought.”

“Each upward shines in golden Love who holds what they were gift,

And dances in God’s hearth, a Dove of flame to sing, to sift.”

“The change will come upon a day, the change I won in pain,

To come again a second Self, like sunshine in the rain.”

“But still the special color min that welled from in my heart,

Remains forever changeless dyed, as in that vase of art.”

“Unbroken yet and still and bright I yet remain as them,

Alone for ages in the rest, and dreaming on the wind.”