Welcome back to the Daily Poem, a podcast from Goldberry Studios. I'm Sean Johnson, and today is Monday, April 28th, 2025.

Today's poem is perhaps a lesser-known work by the great John Keats. It's called This Living Hand.

I'll read it once, offer a few comments, and read it one more time.

This living hand.

This living hand now warm and capable of earnest grasping would, if it were cold and in the icy silence of the tomb,

so haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights,

that thou wouldst wish thine own heart dry of blood,

so in my veins red life might stream again, and thou be conscience calmed.

See, here it is, I hold it towards you.

I think it's fair to say this little poem is characterized chiefly by its intensity. Only eight lines, but it is powerful and passionate. John Keats was a great admirer of Shakespeare.

In fact, he carried a portrait of Shakespeare with him everywhere. On his person, most times,

he would go on walking tours through the English countryside carrying a portrait of Shakespeare.

When he returned home or took up new lodgings,

the portrait of Shakespeare would hang on the wall above the desk where he worked.

And so it's not surprising that often you'll find echoes of the bard in Keats' work.

But here, there's an interesting reverse echo and departure.

Shakespeare in his sonnets especially is often conjuring a vision of the future for his beloved,

but it's a future in which beauty fades. The thing

which causes the beloved perhaps to remain aloof, our great beauty, is going to pass away.

And she had better, if she knows what's good for her, cling to, bind herself to the poet because it's through

the pen of the poet that her beauty will be immortalized and last forever. Keats here is taking one

page out of Shakespeare's book and is also conjuring a vision of the future

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