John Keats’s poem, On death, was composed in 1814 when Keats’s brother was dying from tuberculosis. The poem was written to comfort his brother on his approaching death. During the early spring of 2021, in the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, I was making a conscious effort to overcome my fear of death and mortality. Keats’s poem resonated with my process in overcoming such fears, and contributed towards me learning to manage my worries on death’s inevitability, and embrace the vulnerability of human mortality.

I

Can death be sleep when life is but a dream,
And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by?
The transient pleasures as a vision seem,
And yet we think the greatest pain’s [is] to die.

II

How strange it is that man on earth should roam,
And lead a life of woe, but not forsake
His rugged path; nor dare he view alone
His future doom which is but to awake