In response to yesterday’s poem.

From “Four Epitaths”.

In response to today’s poem [ #1497, “Give Me Women, Wine, and Snuff” ],

Mr. Ramasubramanian recalls a response to Keat’s famous epitaph that posited that Keats’ name ought to have been written in the sky in letters of fire. Mr. Ramasubramanian was unable to recall that poem, and neither can I – but what I did find was three poems by three poets whose poems have been featured in these pages before. One by Oscar Wilde, one by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and the one I wish to feature, the one by Countee Cullen.

In contrast to Longfellow’s and Wilde’s drawn out, overly-flowered, and in

the end, forgettable verses (included below), Cullen, in four short lines, burns into your brain an absolutely unforgettable image: Keats, the poet of such awesome passion and power, that even the cold lips of Death himself are set afire. The power and genius of poetry is the ability to capture powerful, complex ideas in very short spaces. Longfellow and Wilde certainly make clear the depth of respect and feeling each has for Keats. But it is Cullen, in my opinion, which most succeeds in making Keats unforgettable.

This poem is especially powerful for me for having come of age with a

relatively recent literary incarnation of the Grim Reaper. Not the grey, hooded, skeletal spectre of so many past stories, but instead the passionate, vibrant, immortal Lady Teleute of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman, the cute Goth chick with the curl under her eye who was sister to Destiny, Destruction and Dream. That Death, Neil Gaiman’s gentle, beautiful lady Death, she could definately be imagined taking Keats beyond in one final, brilliant, blazing kiss. Influenced by the masterful way way Gaiman wove tales of The Sandman around such other historical figures as William Shakespeare, Augustus Ceasar, and Haroun Al Raschid, Cullen’s poem, imagined through Gaiman’s lens, is to me as unforgettable a memorial to Keats’ legacy as Keats could possibly hope for.

Thank you again for the opportunity to share,

— Jeff

Longfellow’s musings were as follows:

“Keats”

 The young Endymion sleeps Endymion's sleep;
 The shepherd-boy whose tale was left half told!
 The solemn grove uplifts its shield of gold
 To the red rising moon, and loud and deep
 The nightingale is singing from the steep;
 It is midsummer, but the air is cold;
 Can it be death? Alas, beside the fold
 A shepherd's pipe lies shattered near his sheep.
 Lo! in the moonlight gleams a marble white,
 On which I read: "Here lieth one whose name
 Was writ in water." And was this the meed
 Of his sweet singing? Rather let me write:
 "The smoking flax before it burst to flame
 Was quenched by death, and broken the bruised reed."

– Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Oscar Wilde wrote instead this:

“The Grave of Keats”

 Rid of the world's injustice, and his pain,
 He rests at last beneath God's veil of blue:
 Taken from life when life and love were new
 The youngest of the martyrs here is lain,
 Fair as Sebastian, and as early slain.
 No cypress shades his grave, no funeral yew,
 But gentle violets weeping with the dew
 Weave on his bones an ever-blossoming chain.
 O proudest heart that broke for misery!
 O sweetest lips since those of Mitylene!
 O poet-painter of our English Land!
 Thy name was writ in water--it shall stand:
 And tears like mine will keep thy memory green,
 As Isabella did her Basil-tree.

– Oscar Wilde