The sonnet focuses on Keats's life rather than on his literary work, as Caine's commentary was the first to point out. The sonnet thus becomes primarily a cultural rather than a literary or aesthetic exegesis. In this connection, one of the most striking passages is line 8, whose implications are considerable. DGR appears to be drawing a contrast between the alienated vitality of London, sketched at the opening of the octave, with “Dead Rome”, where Keats (in this representation) chose to take an exile's rest. DGR argues that Keats's participation in visionary realms (“Castalian brink and Latmos' steep”) was inward and psychic.
The opening of the sonnet certainly recalls both
DGR wrote the sonnet toward the end of February 1880, as we
see from his letter to Jane Morris of 29 February (see
It was first published in the 1881
as one of the group of sonnets he headed with the title
Recollections