John Keats , The exotically named Adelaide Crapsey was a New York-born poet and English literature teacher whose short life was tragically cut short by tuberculosis. Her poetry output was fairly substantial but she will best be remembered by students of 19th and 20th-century poets as the inventor of a writing technique called “the cinquain”. This was probably born out of her love of the Japanese “tanka and haiku” forms of writing. It’s a kind of compressed style of writing that had many admirers including another famous writer, Ezra Pound.
John Keats by Adelaide Crapsey
Meet thou the event
And terrible happening of
Thine end: for thou are come
Upon the remote, cold place
Of ultimate dissolution and
With dumb, wide look
Thou, impotent, dost feel
Impotence creeping on
Thy potent soul. Yea, now, caught in
The aghast and voiceless pain
Of Death, thyself doth watch
Thyself becoming naught.Peace. . Peace. . for at
The last is comfort. Lo, now
Thou hast no pain. Lo, now
The waited presence is
Within the room; the voice
Speaks final-gentle: “Child,
Even thy careful nurse,
I lift thee in my arms
For greater ease and while
Thy heart still beats, place my
Cool fingers of oblivion on
Thine eyes and close them forEternity. Thou shalt
Pass sleeping, nor know
When sleeping ceases. Yet still
A little while thy breathing lasts,
Gradual is fainter: I
must listen close — the end.”Rest. And you others..All.
Grave-fellows in
Green place. Here grows
Memorial every spring’s
Fresh grass and here
Your marking monument
Was built for you long, long
Ago when Caius Cestius died.
