'Listening respectfully to the talk talk talk'

 Slim volumes of Thom Gunn's verse keep turning up in the charity bookshops that I visit, and I invariably snap them up (quite aside from the contents, which I have only come to appreciate in recent years, they are beautifully designed Faber paperbacks – the legacy of Berthold Wolpe – a joy to handle, and they take up very little shelf space). My latest buy was The Passages of Joy (1982) – a Johnsonian title, taken from The Vanity of Human Wishes: 'Time hovers o'er, impatient to destroy, And shuts up all the passages of joy'. Leafing through it, I found 'Keats at Highgate', a sonnet recalling Keats's fortuitous meeting with Coleridge on Hampstead Heath in April 1819. Here's the story as related by Coleridge, writing, with the premonitory wisdom of hindsight, years after the event (1832):

'A loose, slack, and 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 stayed a minute or so. After he had left us a little way, he ran 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.'

And here is the story as told by Keats, in the midst of a long letter to his brother and sister-in-law, soon after the event. His account – very different from Coleridge's – rings perfectly true, and includes a wonderfully vivid description of what it must have been like to be subjected to the unstoppable Coleridge in full flow: 

'Last Sunday I took a Walk towards Highgate and in the lane that winds by the side of Lord Mansfield's park I met Mr Green our Demonstrator at Guy's in conversation with Coleridge – I joined them, after enquiring by a look whether it would be agreeable – I walked with him at his alderman-after-dinner pace for near two miles I suppose. In those two Miles he broached a thousand things—let me see if I can give you a list—Nightingales, Poetry—on Poetical sensation—Metaphysics—Different genera and species of Dreams—Nightmare—a dream accompanied by a sense of touch – single and double touch – A dream related – First and second consciousness – the difference explained between will and Volition – so many metaphysicians from a want of smoking the second consciousness – Monsters – the Kraken – Mermaids – Southey believed in them – Southey's belief too much diluted – A Ghost story – Good morning – I heard his voice as he came towards me – I heard it as he moved away – I had heard it all the interval – if it may be called so.'

And here, finally, is Thom Gunn's sonnet: 

Keats at Highgate

A cheerful youth joined Coleridge on his walk
(“Loose,” noted Coleridge, “slack, and not well-dressed”)
Listening respectfully to the talk talk talk
Of First and Second Consciousness, then pressed
The famous hand with warmth and sauntered back
Homeward in his own state of less dispersed
More passive consciousness – passive, not slack,
Whether of Secondary type or First.

He made his way toward Hampstead so alert
He hardly passed the small grey ponds below
Or watched a sparrow pecking in the dirt
Without some insight swelling the mind’s flow
That banks made swift. Everything put to use.
Perhaps not well-dressed but oh no not loose.