I love your essay, but please correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no firm, manuscript evidence that Keats wrote the poem “Can Death be Sleep.”
Based on my research, the poem often referred to as “On Death”, first appeared arbitrarily in the 1883 edition of Richard Monckton Milnes’s edition of Keats's works, and later Henry Buxton Forman edited and expanded Milnes’s original anthology, incorporating many early poems attributed to Keats, often based on literary tradition rather than manuscript evidence.
In fact, many authoritative critical editions of Keats’s collected poems do not include it. One of these is the Collected Poems edited by Jack Stillinger and published by Harvard University Press, which is based on a systematic investigation of the transmission of the texts. I have it, and it does not list On Death among Keats’s poems.
This is fascinating! I have not encountered this evidence for the poem not being written by him, as the poem is present in at least one of the anthologies of Romantic poetry that I own.
I have chosen to include Brown’s account of Keats having written the Ode to a Nightingale at breakfast one morning while listening to nightingale song, as it seems plausible to me that Brown is telling the truth, although there is some conflicting manuscript evidence for this aswell. I believe Robert Gittings includes this account in his biography of Keats, so I feel a little firmer in including it here.
As for the poem, On Death, I have always loved it! But I will research it’s veracity in quiet hope that he did in fact write it (!) Thank you for this.
The single best and most brilliant explanation of a poem/poetry I have ever read
Thank you John!!
This was beautiful. Thank you.
Glad you thought so :)
I loved the conclusion.
Beautiful ❤️❤️
This is the most matured, pure and sublime interpretation I have ever read
Thank you :)
Beautiful! I’m so grateful for your gifts here. 🙏🏽
I love your essay, but please correct me if I’m wrong, but there is no firm, manuscript evidence that Keats wrote the poem “Can Death be Sleep.”
Based on my research, the poem often referred to as “On Death”, first appeared arbitrarily in the 1883 edition of Richard Monckton Milnes’s edition of Keats's works, and later Henry Buxton Forman edited and expanded Milnes’s original anthology, incorporating many early poems attributed to Keats, often based on literary tradition rather than manuscript evidence.
In fact, many authoritative critical editions of Keats’s collected poems do not include it. One of these is the Collected Poems edited by Jack Stillinger and published by Harvard University Press, which is based on a systematic investigation of the transmission of the texts. I have it, and it does not list On Death among Keats’s poems.
This is fascinating! I have not encountered this evidence for the poem not being written by him, as the poem is present in at least one of the anthologies of Romantic poetry that I own.
I have chosen to include Brown’s account of Keats having written the Ode to a Nightingale at breakfast one morning while listening to nightingale song, as it seems plausible to me that Brown is telling the truth, although there is some conflicting manuscript evidence for this aswell. I believe Robert Gittings includes this account in his biography of Keats, so I feel a little firmer in including it here.
As for the poem, On Death, I have always loved it! But I will research it’s veracity in quiet hope that he did in fact write it (!) Thank you for this.
An excellent journey into the mystery of life and poetic inspiration.