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A loose, slack, not well-dressed youth met Mr. Green and myself in a lane near Highgate. Green 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 came back and said, “Let me carry away the memory, Coleridge, of having pressed your hand!” “There is death in that hand,” I said to Green, when Keats was gone; yet this was, I believe, before the consumption showed itself distinctly.

S. T. Coleridge (Table Talk).

This was about 1819. It is pathetic, this meeting of two great poets, Keats who was to die two years afterwards at the early age of twenty-six, and Coleridge, whose few brilliant years of poetic life had long previously ended in slavery to the opium-habit.

THE BALLAD OF JUDAS ISCARIOT

’Twas the body of Judas Iscariot

Lay in the Field of Blood;

’Twas the soul of Judas Iscariot

Beside the body stood.

Black was the earth by night,

And black was the sky;

Black, black were the broken clouds,

Tho’ the red Moon went by....