To George and Georgiana Keats, Friday 19th March 1819

My dear brother and sister;

This morning I am in a sort of temper indolent and supremely careless: I long after a stanza or two of Thompson’s Castle of indolence—My passions are all asleep from my having slumbered till nearly eleven and weakened the animal fibre all over me to a delightful sensation about three degrees on this side of faintness.
In this state of effeminacy the fibres of the brain are relaxed in common with the rest of the body, and to such a happy degree that pleasure has no show of enticement and pain no unbearable frown. Neither poetry, nor ambition nor love have any alertness of countenance as they pass by me: they seem rather like three figures on a greek vase—a man and two women—whom no one but myself could distinguish in their disguisement. This is the only happiness; and is rare instance ofadvantage in ther body overpowering the mind. I have this moment received a note from Haslam in which he expects the death of his Father who has been for some time in a state of insensibility—his mother bears up he says very well—I shall go to town tomorrow to see him. This is the world—thus we cannot expect to give way many hours to pleasure—while we are laughing the seed of some trouble is put into the wide arable land of events—while we are laughing it sprouts it grows and suddenly bears a poison fruit which we must pluck.