John Keats

In “This Living Hand”, Keats is referring to his freedom of speech through writing. He implies, “This living hand, now warm and capable/ of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold/and in the icy silence of the tomb, /So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights.” (444) Keats knows how impactful writing is from someone rather dead or living. Keats personified handwriting as a spirit in which to haunt those who do not appreciate or support his literary concepts or literature at all for that matter. In the end of this piece he goes on to state that the handwriting will never go away. In fact, he guarantees that you would want him to be alive again just so you will not be so bothered by his afterlife persuasion as much as his present one.