The first beauty in my life is John Keats.
In John Keats is my faith in some resurrection.
Without John Keats human nature feels to be something broken,
menacing, unspeakably despicable and lost--lost in the shade. With
John Keats the lights break across it and reflect the blazing yellow
sun again from eyes and foreheads and fingers and shining hair.
There are world-and-human things which it thrills me to think about
and dwell on: Nathan Hale on the British gallows: the charge of
Pickett’s Confederate infantry at Gettysburg: Henry V, prince among
kings and men, at Agincourt: Charlotte Corday in prison: Columbus
with his felon crews sailing westward: Susan B. Anthony--a woman
made in a strange still heroic splendor half-incredible: Alexander
Hamilton: Arnold Winkelried: the sea-worn Pilgrim women disembarking
into bitter Novemberness.
Those thrill me because they are brave persons and brave things
full of idealistic strife: but they still are made of very
struggling-garbled world-stuff--they are mere human fabric--till I
think of John Keats: and at once they grow informing and eternal.
In his light the detailed world burns and glows!