JOHN KEATS
John Keats, one of the greatest English poets and a major figure in the Romantic Movement, was born in 1795 in Moorfields, London and died in 1821. His father died when he was eight and his mother when he was 14.
Keats was well educated at a school in Enfield and in 1810 he was apprenticed to an apothecary-surgeon. His first attempts at writing poetry date from about 1814, and include an `Imitation' of the Elizabethan poet Edmund Spenser. In 1815 he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital, London; one year later, he abandoned the profession of medicine for poetry.
After his brother’s death in December he moved into a friend's house in Hampstead, now known as Keats House. There he met and fell deeply in love with a young neighbour, Fanny Brawne. During the following year, despite ill health and financial problems, he wrote an astonishing amount of poetry, including `The Eve of St Agnes', 'La Belle Dame sans Merci', `Ode to a Nightingale' and `To Autumn'. His second volume of poems appeared in July 1820; soon afterwards, by now very ill with tuberculosis, he set off with a friend to Italy, where he died the following February. Keats died peacefully, clasping his friend's Joseph Severn hand, on 23 February 1821.
This poet provides great poems. What I recommend you is few minutes of the day for quiet and reflection with some of his wonderful works.
Here are some of his works:
In his poems we find a cordial serene elegant movement, a detailed description in which all the sense combines a delight in the sheer experience of things in a nightingale, an urn (common place).
In his characteristics oppositions: Melancholy/delight; pleasure/pain; love/death; feeling/thoughts.
What I emphasize in Keats is his use of the sonnet and his notable sense of the rhythm. Apart from the fact that he doesn’t say much with his verses (in terms to express ideas, I refer), these are the most beautiful and emotive ones that I have read before.
The poem “The Human Seasons” was written by John Keats at Teignmouth and enclosed it in a letter to Benjamin Bailey dated 13 March 1818. It was later included in his “Poems” published in 1819.