Unbidden Visions by jeremythurlow

In March 1818 Keats was haunted by a nightmare. His thoughts and moods were invaded obsessively by sudden visions, in brilliant and unwanted clarity, of the remorselessly savage cycles of the natural world – what Tennyson later called ‘Nature, red in tooth and claw’. I chanced across Keats’ ruminations on these terrifying and melancholic visions in a strange, rambling verse letter he wrote to his friend J.H Reynolds, and soon found myself wanting to set them to music.