“If poetry comes not as naturally as the leaves to a tree, it had better not come at all”

Poet John Keats achieved, in less than 30 years, an immortality that has lasted more than a century. His poems still read as much or more as they were in his lifetime, Keats has become one of the most celebrated poets of all time.

Born in London in 1795, Keats was the child of a working class family. At the age of 15, he was apprenticed to a surgeon in order to learn a trade with which to support himself. However, despite his successful apprenticeship, Keats displayed an even larger talent for poetry than for medicine, translating Virgil and writing his own long poetry.

By 1818, around the age of 23, Keats published his “Endymion: A Poetic Romance” to mixed but mostly favorable reviews. However, the poor reviews afflicted Keats so that he fell into a sickness that revealed itself later to be the beginnings of tuberculosis.
JOHN KEATS was born in London, October 29, 1795, and he died of consumption, February 23, 1821, in Rome.

Born in the common walks of life, it was necessary for him to rely upon his own efforts for a support. He was educated at Enfield. Choosing medicine as a profession, he was apprenticed, at the age of fifteen, to a surgeon at Edmonton. Although he spent most of his time in literary study, yet he completed his apprenticeship creditably and repaired to London to complete his work in the hospital.

Despite his poor health, Keats continued to write almost fanatically, and in 1820 published a collection of poems that included “Lamia,” “Isabella,” and “Hyperion.” This volume of poetry elevated Keats’ status in the literary world to one of a master poet, who gained the attention of such vaunted Romantic poets as Percy Bysshe Shelley and George Gordon, Lord Byron, a former critic of Keats who now claimed Keats’ poetry to be as “subline as Aeschylus.”

However, Keats’ new-found fame was to be in vain. His health was such that it was recommended that he go to the more temperate climate in Italy, but the journey itself was so arduous that Keats’ became worse rather than better, and in February of 1821 succumbed to tuberculosis at the age of 25.

Although Keats’ life was all too brief, he left a legacy of poetry that has only gained in stature since his death.

Poems By Keats:

When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be:

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean\'d my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen\'d grain;
When I behold, upon the night\'s starr\'d face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;
And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love;--then on the shore
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

To Solitude:

O solitude! if I must with thee dwell,
Let it not be among the jumbled heap
Of murky buildings; climb with me the steep,-
Nature\'s observatory-whence the dell,
Its flowery slopes, its river\'s crystal swell,
May seem a span; let me thy vigils keep
\'Mongst boughs pavillion\'d, where the deer\'s swift leap
Startles the wild bee from the fox-glove bell.
But though I\'ll gladly trace these scenes with thee,
Yet the sweet converse of an innocent mind,
Whose words are images of thoughts refin\'d,
Is my soul\'s pleasure; and it sure must be
Almost the highest bliss of human-kind,
When to thy haunts two kindred spirits flee.

La Belle Dame Sans Merci:

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
Alone and palely loitering;
The sedge is wither\'d from the lake,
And no birds sing.

Ah, what can ail thee, wretched wight,
So haggard and so woe-begone?
The squirrel\'s granary is full,
And the harvest\'s done.

I see a lily on thy brow,
With anguish moist and fever dew;
And on thy cheek a fading rose
Fast withereth too.

I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery\'s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I set her on my pacing steed,
And nothing else saw all day long;
For sideways would she lean, and sing
A faery\'s song.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She look\'d at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan.

She found me roots of relish sweet,
And honey wild, and manna dew;
And sure in language strange she said,
I love thee true.

She took me to her elfin grot,
And there she gaz\'d and sighed deep,
And there I shut her wild sad eyes--
So kiss\'d to sleep.

And there we slumber\'d on the moss,
And there I dream\'d, ah woe betide,
The latest dream I ever dream\'d
On the cold hill side.

I saw pale kings, and princes too,
Pale warriors, death-pale were they all;
Who cry\'d--\"La belle Dame sans merci
Hath thee in thrall!\"

I saw their starv\'d lips in the gloam
With horrid warning gaped wide,
And I awoke, and found me here
On the cold hill side.

And this is why I sojourn here
Alone and palely loitering,
Though the sedge is wither\'d from the lake,
And no birds sing.
