THE POET'S LYRE
LINK WITH KEATS Through private generosity a precious relic has become a national possession. It is a tiny golden lyre with eight strings, and each string is composed of about fonr strands of the hair of the poet Keats. Joseph Severn, the'friend in whose arms Keats died, kept the lyre for 39 years, then his daughter had it, and after her I death it wont to her great friend Miss ! Palliser, who bequeathed it to her nieces. < Joseph Severn, who designed the lyre on Keats's tombstone in Rome, used the same design in a gold brooch which he intended for the poet's sweetheart, Fanny Brawne. Perhaps he felt afterward that the lyre strung with her dead lover's hair would waken her grief all over again. Keats had been dead a year. At any rate, he kept the precious relic himself. It is at once a memorial of the poet Keats and the artist Severn. It stands for a most beautiful friendship.
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19330211.2.192.60.8
Bibliographic details
New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)
Word Count
164THE POET'S LYRE New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21414, 11 February 1933, Page 9 (Supplement)
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