...Keats' Bright Star and Ode to Psyche...

...it is well known that Keats died at a young age.  An impossibly young age I would say: not even realizing his twenty-sixth birthday.  Yet, his great light left behind him a blazing trail of Romantic prose.  Two poems in particular, both complete in 1819, embody the wild-haired temperament of young love.  One predated the meeting of Fanny Brawne, for whom Bright Star was revised upon meeting her, wanting her:

"Bright Star" - Keats

"...Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast,
To feel for ever its soft swell and fall,
Awake for ever in a sweet unrest,
Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath..."

With Ode to Psyche, he goes to tremendous lengths to coalesce the imagery in his head as he describes that he can "see the winged Psyche with awakened eyes?"  From there, the mind is breathless trying to cram the amount of visceral senses:

"...'Mid hushed, cool-rooted flowers, fragrant-eyed,
Blue, silver-white, and budded Tyrian...
...No voice, no lute, no pipe, no incense sweet
From chain-swung censer teeming;
No shrine, no grove, no oracle, no heat
Of pale mouthed prophet dreaming...
...A rosy sanctuary will I dress
With the wreathed trellis of a working brain,
With buds, and bells, and stars without a name,
With all the gardener Fancy e'er could feign..."

There appears to be no correlation of Psyche to Fanny, the production of this work would have been in advance of their meeting.  But, as those that write poetry could attest, the final 'glow' of a piece could be tempered by a muse.  One would have been good, by the muse, much greater than before.  Although, reading this piece through a few times, he does sound more like a lover of a wistful idea than a being made of sinew and blood.

But for both muses, may they be gossamer or flesh-made, for they provide for us the lightening of the heart, and carry with it a voice that would span time.

[As an aside, I wonder if "Fanny" by the Bee Gees was somehow a nod to Keats.  I've attempted an e-mail to Mr. Barry Gibb and will be patient for an answer.]