Keats-Shelley 200: A Special Tour of the Non-Catholic Cemetery

In October 2022, friends and poetry lovers joined the Keats-Shelley Memorial Association for our final event of the Keats-Shelley 200 programme, which over the past 3 years has commemorated the bicentenaries of our beloved poets John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Guests gathered at the Non-Catholic Cemetery to tour the grounds, visit the poets graves and hear readings of Keats’s and Shelley’s poetry, introduced by Keats-Shelley Ambassador and BBC Presenter, Reeta Chakrabarti and read by actor, Fred Fergus.

[@basittalii]

I wrote this poem on John Keats some 15 years ago. I have quit poety, but I want to present this poem to Keats-Shelley Memorial House. (Sorry if my way is quite untoward)
Ode to John Keats
More than twenty years have passed since then,
And most I used to see those days, have changed;
I can not hear and talk to most of men
I used to talk from here and there wide ranged.
Where have they gone from me? Of course, they have
Gone to some city, state or foreign land,
And settled down to never come here back,
Or lain in some cold grave,
Or taken rest some where imprisoned, and
No notes to hear and read from them, Alack.
Yet there is something constant in my mind,
Some thoughts and dreams and visions of those days,
When I go through your poems, I feel and find
Those youthful years of life lie there always.
The memories of your Odes are fresh and green!
How great I loved to read them late at nights!
And dreamed to write one like them from my own,
That no one could have seen,
By bard who lived with different tongue and sights,
And who more than you two cent years had grown.
I do have themes to write on as you did,
But lack the force you put them down in Odes
With, the force I may have found in mid
Of fake and genuine springs, of muses' abodes.
Why I don’t feel to write immortal themes,
As you did: Nightingale and Grecian Urn,
And Autumn, all times favourite on my part?
Quite obviously the schemes
Of things have changed, and written word in turn
Has lost its worth, especially in Art.
-------
Havi Shah

[@danaj.]

Fantastic video! Thank you so much. :)