Who Was That Masked Man?

One of the more curious exhibits in Edinburgh's Scottish National Portrait Gallery was this cabinet of life and death masks, most of which are not remotely Scottish. Look, there's Blake, Keats, Wordsworth and, blimey, that's Voltaire (his is not perfect, but good enough). They're there because they were assembled by the Scottish Phrenological Society and, well, they're just fascinating, aren't they? Before photography, I suppose this was as close as you could get to a 1:1 likeness, though the discomfort of the procedure in life led to some rather squashed, miserable-looking faces. Apparently Blake (top row, third from left) looked nothing like as grumpy as that in life (his hair got pulled out by the plaster) but I like to think he looks like he's getting down to some seriously heavy music in the celestial headphones.

I thought Keats (bottom row, first on the left) might go well with my "burning man" collage, so I've produced a second version which works quite well, I think. Again, he looks like a man blissed out to some music only he can hear. As he put it in the "Ode on a Grecian Urn":

Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
  Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear'd,
  Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone...

"Ditties of no tone", though... The more I read Keats, the more I think he really could have done with a tough-love editor, prepared to wield the blue pencil. Look, I'm sorry, John, but "ditties" just doesn't work... And what kind of rhyme is that meant to be, anyway, might I ask? With just a bit more work, this could be really good... But FFS go easy with the "thees", "thous", "wilts", and "werts"! Nobody talks like that any more: this is 1819, mate!

Writ in water