Another paper treasure from the Key West library: the last library card of great American playwright Tennessee Williams; paired with the “urgent request” to return an overdue biography of John Keats, whose “Ode to a Nightingale,” includes the line “Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!”
Tennessee, nicknamed “Bird” by Gore Vidal, may have had good reason for missing this due date. His death came in a hotel room in New York just one month later. Keats seems pitch-perfect reading for that final winter of 1982-83:
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk,
Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains
One minute past, and Lethe-wards had sunk:
Tis not through envy of thy happy lot,
But being too happy in thine happiness, —
That thou, light-winged Dryad of the trees,
In some melodious plot
Of beechen green, and shadows numberless
Singest of summer in full-throated ease.
from “Ode to a Nightingale,” John Keats
Tags: Key West Characters, Paper under the Palms
