13 March 2023
In the late afternoon of Sunday, September 19, 1819, 23-year-old John Keats struck out for his daily walk from his lodging in Winchester, England. He'd arrived in the city a month prior, leaving behind southern England's Isle of Wight for a change of scenery in the cathedral city of Winchester. It was, potentially, his farewell tour as a poet: one last gasp to get it right or forsake his art forever. "My purpose now is to make one more attempt in the Press," Keats wrote to his friend Benjamin Haydon the previous June, "if that fail, ‘ye hear no more of me' as Chaucer says."
