Explore "Steinmetz and Keats" by Samuel Taylor Coleridge on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Poor dear Steinmetz is gone, -- his state of sure blessedness accelerated; or, it may be, he is buried in Christ, and there in that mysterious depth grows on to the spirit of a just man made perfect! Could I for a moment doubt this, the grass would become black beneath my feet, and this earthly frame a charnel-house. I never knew any man so illustrate the difference between the feminine and the effeminate.
A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. -- -- and myself in a lane near Highgate. -- -- knew him, and spoke. It was Keats. He was introduced to me, and staid a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he came back and said: "Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand! " -- "There is death in that hand," I said to -- -- , when Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.