The poet Keats “Half in love with is full…
Page 185. The poet Keats “Half in love with is full death, to see Spohn the midnight with no pain “
— from The Landing (Death) · 21 letters on life and its challenges by Charles handy
In the book
We grieve the living too — the ends of relationships that do not die but change — and learning to tell mortal grief from that ordinary, relational kind keeps us from being blindsided by either. Even our dread of the end is more tangled than we admit; the poet Keats confessed that he had long been half in love with easeful death, with ceasing upon the midnight with no pain. And grief can be borne and even transfigured: I think of a man named Robert, whose family said that their sadness at his death never once touched their love for him, and that they were at peace, because he had lived such a rich and well-loved life. — The Landing (Death)