The Silent Isle by A.C. Benson

I have been reading all to-day the Letters of Keats, a thing which I do at irregular intervals. Perhaps what I am going to say may sound affected, but it is perfectly true: it is a book that always has a very peculiar effect on me, not so much a mental effect as what, for want of a better word, I will call a spiritual effect. It sets my soul on flame. I feel as though I had drawn near to a spirit burning like a fiery lamp, and that my own torpid and inert spirit had been kindled at it. That flame will burn out again, as it has burnt out many times before; but while the fire still leaps and glances in my heart I will try to put down exactly what it makes me feel I believe there are few books that give one, in the first place, more of the author's own heart. Is there in the world any book which gives so fully the youthful, ebullient thoughts of a man of the highest poetical genius as this? I cannot recall any.

Keats, to his brothers, his sister, and to one or two intimate friends, allowed his long, vague letters to be an absolutely intimate diary of what he was thinking. You see his genius rise and flush and blaze and grow cold again before your eyes.