What he specially longs for now, he writes,--he has been ill, and is within a year of his death,--is 'the simple flowers of Spring.'
In the same letter we get a glimpse of certain early personal associations not fully followed, which would seem to lend an added loveliness to flowers which he had always found in themselves so lovely.
'How astonishingly,' he writes, ' ...does the chance of leaving the world impress a sense of its natural beauties upon us! Like poor Falstaff, though I do not "babble," I think of green fields; I muse with the greatest affection on every flower I have known from my infancy--their shapes and colors are as new to me as if I had just created them with a superhuman fancy. It is because they are connected with the most thoughtless and happiest moments of our lives. I have seen foreign flowers in hothouses, of the most beautiful nature, but I do not care a straw for them. The simple flowers of our Spring are what I want to see again!'
He did see them once again, and then no more.
In the account of his drive to Rome, he who reads sympathetically must enjoy most, it seems to me, as doubtless Keats did, the autumn flowers which Severn gathered for him by the way and put into his remembering hand.
Lying quiet at the last, as Severn tells us, with his hand clasped on the white carnelian Fanny Brawne had given him, when all other presences seemed to have departed from him,--Love and Ambition having for the last time visited him,--and when life itself, with her hand already on the latch, stood ready to depart, there lingered yet awhile beside him that old sense of loveliness that had so often, even from earliest infancy, visited and haunted his spirit--the loveliness and friendliness of flowers. Already, in some vision of his spirit, he was laid down in their green world he knew so well and loved. 'I feel,' he said, 'the flowers growing over me.'
The observations I have suggested are here touched on but lightly, and in passing. I have made no profound study of them, or of the infinitely subtle psychology which, without doubt, underlies such hauntings of the spirit. I have but known these men from childhood and from early youth: have watched with them in many watchings. If there be one boast left me when I also shall go down into the darkness to which they have so long lent splendor, it may well be that these I have loved and have cherished with a whole heart, and would have served them if I could, than Horatio not less eager: 'Here, sweet lord, at your service.'