“Oh fuck me, I love Keats…”
Here lies one whose name was Wit n’ Rotter?

John Keats, in an 1818 letter:

… however, it seems to me that we should rather be the flower than the Bee — for it is a false notion that more is gained by receiving than giving — no, the receiver and the giver are equal in their benefits. The flower, I doubt not, receives a fair guerdon from the Bee — its leaves blush deeper in the next spring — and who shall say between man and woman which is the most delighted?

I read about this passage in Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees. Toby Maytree copies down that last question from a book of Keats’s letters, because Keats is supposedly asking something that Maytree has been wondering himself: Who enjoyed lovemaking more — the man or the woman? Who shall say? His wife Lou has a good answer:

He proposed Keats’s question to Lou one morning as they shared the last of the tooth powder. —Say, Lou — here’s a question. Keats put it, “Who shall say between Man and Woman which is the more delighted?” What do you think?

—The woman. Rather prompt of silent Lou. Much later that night in their shack bed she added just as he was rolling asleep, If the man is John Keats.

Indirectly Keatsy: Michael Flanders of Flanders and Swann, monologuing:

When we came back from Toronto, [Swann] had 125 pounds excess baggage. In the end we had to leave her behind!

Lovely girl. Known locally as La Belle Dame sans Merci … the beautiful lady who never says thank you.