Title: Famous Last Words | Academy of American Poets
Headings: Famous Last Words
Famous Last Words
Content: In 1818, John Keats returned home from a tour of Northern England and Scotland to care for his brother, who had contracted tuberculosis. Unfortunately, Keats’s brother died in December of that year and by that time Keats himself had contracted the disease and knew that his death was imminent. Following his doctor’s orders to seek a warm climate for the winter, Keats traveled to Rome with his friend, the painter Joseph Severn. Keats recovered briefly for Christmas but on January 10, 1819, his health took a final turn for the worst and Keats was unable to leave his bedroom. Just before Keats’s death, Severn asked the poet how he was doing, to which Keats quietly replied, “Better, my friend. I feel the daisies growing over me.” Keats died in Severn’s arms on February 23, 1821, at the age of twenty-five. Philip Larkin: “ I am going to the inevitable.” This bleak goodbye was spoken by a somber Philip Larkin at the time of his death.