About the Poet

Keats was born October 31, 1795 in London, the first born of four children to a wealthy coachman. Keats's father died in a riding accident when he was eight and his mother of tuberculosis when he was fourteen. In his early days he studied medicine as an apprentice to a surgeon.

Intellectually he has been said to have been influenced by Hazlitt, Milton, a perceptive understanding of Wordsworth, and although he did not live long enough to produce vast amounts of poetry in his own time, Keats has influenced many 20th century poets since. Keats wrote most of his Poetry from 1818 onwards, where he has been said to have come into his own as a Poet. His love for Fanny Brawne inspiring some of his poems, others by his humanistic appreciation of nature and perceptive appreciation of the human senses, psyche, and emotional response as people go through their experiences of life. His most famous poems being Hyperion, The fall of Hyperion, Lamia, Odes - To a Grecian Urn, To Melancholy,, To Autumn, and To a Nightingale.

Keats nursed his brother when he was dying of tuberculosis and then himself developed the disease and died at 25 years old in Rome February 23, 1821 having been told six months prior that he would not survive the year and therefore was also unable to marry Fanny Brawne.

When I Have Fears

When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has geaned my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night's starred 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 should 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
Til love and fame to nothingness do sink.

1818

This Living Hand

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
That thou would'st wish thine own heart dry of blood
So in my veins red life may stream again,
And thou be conscience-calmed - see here it is -
I hold it towards you.

1819-20

On first Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much I have travelled to the realms of gold,
And many godly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold,
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene?

Til i heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When some new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
he stared at the Pacific - and all his men
Looked at each other with wild surmise -
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

1816

On the Sonnet

If by dull rhymes our English must be chained,
And, like Andromeda, the Sonnet sweet
fettered, in spite of pained loveliness,
Let us find out, if we must be constrained,
Sandals more interwoven and complete
To fit the naked foot of Posey:
Let us inspect the Lyre, and weigh the stress
Of every chord, and see what may be gained
By ear industrious, and attention meet;
Misers of sound and syllable, no less
Than Midas of his coinage, let us be
Jealous of dead leaves in the bay wreath crown;
So, if we may not let the Muse be free,
She will be bound with garlands of her own.

1819