济慈诗歌和书信选(英文版)To Charles Brown, 30th November 1820
To Charles Brown, 30th November 1820
My dear Brown;
It is the most difficult thing in the world to me to write a letter. My stomach continues so bad, that I feel it worse on opening any book,--yet I am much better than I was in Quarantine. Then I am afraid to encounter the proing and conning of any thing interesting to me in England. I have an habitual feeling of my real life having past, and that I am leading a posthumous existence. God knows how it would have been—but it appears to me—however, I will not speak of that subject. I must have been at Bedhampton nearly at the time you were writing to me from Chichester—how unfortunate—and to pas on the river too! There was may star predominant! I cannot answer anything in your letter, which followed me from Naples to Rome, because I am afraid to look it over again. I am so weak in mind that I cannot bear the sight of any hand writing of a friend I love so much as I do you. Yet I ride the little horse, --and, at my worst, even in quarantine, summoned up more puns, in a sort of desperation, in one week than in any year of my life. There is one thought enough to kill me—I have been well, healthy, alert and c, walking with her—and now—the knowledge of contrast, feeling for light and shade, all that information necessary for a poem are great enemies to the recovery of the stomach. There you rogue, I put you to the torture,--but you must bring your philosophy to bear –as I do mine, really—or how shuld I be able to live? Dr Clark is very attentive to me; he says, there is very little the matter with my lungs, but my stomach, he says is very bad. I am well disappointed in hearing good news from George,--for it runs in my head we shall all die young. I have not written to ..yet, which he must think very neglectful: being anxious to send him a good account of my health, I have delayed it from week to week. If I recover, I will do all in my power to correct the mistakes made during sickness; and if I should no, all my faults will be forgiven. I shall write to … tomorrow, or next day. I will write to ….in the middle of next week. Servern is very well, though he leads so dull a life with me. Remember me to all friends, and tell ….i should not have left London without taking leave of him, but fro mbeingso low in bo0dy and mind. Write to George as soon as you receive this, and tell him how I am, as far as you can guess; --and also a note to my sister—who walks about my imagination like a ghost—she is so like Tom. I can scarcely bid you goodbye even in a letter. I always made an awkward bow.
God bless you
John Keats
