Keats has himself written that he had sensuous night dreams. He wrote in April, 1819, apropos the sonnet, A Dream, after reading Dante's Episode of Paolo and Francesca: "The dream was one of the most delightful enjoyments I had in my life. I floated about the wheeling atmosphere, as it is described, with a beautiful figure, to whose lips mine were joined, it seemed for an age; and in the midst of all this cold and darkness I was warm." A flying dream always has a sexual significance, even without any female figure to accompany the dreamer. Of course this figure was Fanny Brawne to whom he had just been or was about to be betrothed.
II
We now come to his two greatest odes, the one to the Grecian Urn and the other to the Nightingale. Both were written in the spring of 1819. In both Fanny Brawne is with the poet though there is no direct mention of his love for her or his troubles with her. The lines in the Ode to a Grecian Urn that particularly were written with Fanny in mind are those addressed to the lover of the Grecian Urn.
"Bold Lover, never, never, canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal—yet do not grieve;
She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
For ever wilt thou love and she be fair."
Keats saw a resemblance between himself and that youth. He, too, was winning and near the goal, and he no more had her love than did the youth on the urn. He himself knew the passion
"That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy'd,