Keats was reconciled to his early death

Daisies decorate the grave of John Keats in Rome’s Protestant cemetery. ‘Keats could have been under no illusion as to his own prognosis,’ writes Austen Lynch. Photograph: Gregorio Borgia/AP

Paul Brown (Weatherwatch, 19 September) is right that Keats must have been aware of his impending death, not witnessing the deaths of his mother and brother from tuberculosis, but nursing them in their final hours. Having begun but not completed his medical training at Guy’s Hospital, he could have been under no illusion as to his own prognosis. The “fume of poppies” may even refer to 19th-century medication. However, rather than expressing self-pity or melancholy, he seems to have been reconciled to his fate, the red sky of stratocumulus at sunset, combined with swallows preparing to migrate to warmer climes, together with Christian images of salvation, suggest a more positive view of his own afterlife.
Austen Lynch
Garstang, Lancashire

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