John Keats

Wentworth Place, July 3rd, 1819.

My dearest Fanny,

I want a brighter word than bright, a fairer word than fair. I know not what to say to you—what words to choose, for all seem poor and inadequate when set against the reality of my feelings for you. At night, when I lie wakeful thinking of you, my passion gets entirely the sway, and I write what I dare not show you during the light of common day, lest I appear too unhappy or perhaps a little mad.

Yet what can I do but pour out my heart to you? You have entrammelled me completely—not against my will, but so entirely that I wonder how I ever lived before knowing you. I almost wish we were butterflies and liv’d but three summer days—three such days with you I could fill with more delight than fifty common years could ever contain.

When I see you, when I am near you, I feel as though I am in the presence of something divine, yet so sweetly human that my heart nearly breaks with the intensity of it all. Your laugh, the way you turn your head when something amuses you, the serious expression you wear when you are thinking deeply—these small gestures have become my whole world.

I have never known any unalloy’d Happiness for many days together. The morning brings anxiety, the evening brings doubt, and only those moments when I am with you, or writing to you as I do now, bring me any peace. Is this what love is supposed to be? This sweet torment, this exquisite agony?

You must think me foolish to express myself so plainly, but I cannot help it. I am not like other men who can hide their feelings behind polite conversation and social custom. With you, I am laid bare, all pretense stripped away. Perhaps this is why I fear sometimes that you will grow weary of my intensity, that you will long for someone more steady, more conventional in his affections.

But I cannot be other than I am. When I love, I love with my whole being. When I write poetry, it comes from the same source as this letter—from a heart that feels too much, that sees beauty and tragedy intertwined in everything. You have become both my muse and my tormentor, my greatest joy and my deepest fear.

Sometimes I catch myself watching you when you are unaware, trying to memorize every detail of your face, the way the light falls on your hair, the grace of your movements. I am like a man dying of thirst who has found a spring but fears it may be a mirage. How can something so perfect as my love for you be real? How can you, with all your beauty and wit and liveliness, care for someone as consumed and restless as I?

I know I ask too much of you sometimes, that my need for constant reassurance must grow tiresome. But you are my anchor in a world that often seems too bright, too sharp, too full of sensation for one person to bear. Without you, I feel I would dissolve into the very poems I write, become nothing but words on a page.

Do you understand what you mean to me? You are not just the woman I love—you are the proof that beauty exists in this world, that there is something worth all the pain and struggle of living. When I write of autumn leaves and nightingales, of urns and melancholy, I am really writing of you—of the way you make me feel that life, despite its brevity, is unutterably precious.

I must stop here, for I grow too fervent, too wild in my expressions. But know this: whatever comes, however long or short our time together may be, you have given me more happiness than I ever dared hope for. In loving you, I have learned what it means to be fully alive.

Write to me soon, my beloved. Tell me your thoughts, your feelings, even your doubts. I can bear anything but silence from you.

Forever yours, with all the passion and tenderness of which my heart is capable, John Keats

P.S.—I am sending with this letter a small poem I wrote yesterday while thinking of you. It is rough still, unfinished, but it contains all my love for you distilled into verse. Perhaps one day I will have the skill to write something truly worthy of what you mean to me.