John Keats

The poet with the magical touch.

John Keats- His Life

John was born on 31 October 1795 in London. He was the first of four children. His father worked as the manager at the Swan and Hoop Inn, Moorgate London- a reasonably secure and prosperous position. However life can't have been easy. His father died when he was eight in a riding accident, and his mother when he was fourteen from tuberculosis- the disease that would later claim more of her family.
Despite this he was by all accounts a fighter. Though he was small, about five feet, he was not adverse to getting into scraps in the school ground. He was also remarkably handsome and good natured. He and his younger brother Tom were very close from an early age.
John had a sound but basic education, and unlike Shelley and Byron, he was never able to go to university- something that was later thrown in his face by his critics. They sneered at him and called him "the Cockney Poet". Instead he was apprenticed to a surgeon and studied as a medical student. But this was not his first love. He gave up medicine for his true passion- literature.
Falling in with the right crowd of literati, including Leigh Hunt and eventually the fiery Shelley, he was published in 1816 in 'the Examiner'. His early works were good, and his writings show a man with fierce independence and firm beliefs, but his poetic voice did not catch up with him until 1818
This was the beginning, and the end for Keats. He nursed and cared for his brother Tom, who died of tuberculosis in this year. It was probably when he developed it himself. In August he was forced to cut short a walking tour because of what must have been the early signs of the disease.
It is impossible to measure the effect this must have had on a young, intelligent energetic youth, but we do know what its results were. In 1819 Keats had one the most prolific and amazing year any writer in the English language has been given. It has been called the Annus Mirabilis. Several events moulded it. He was terribly ill at times, and what's more he must have known it, having cared for his brother, as well as being a trained surgeon. He had also met and fell in love with Fanny Brawne. This relationship was to be his greatest joy and his greatest pain, as he gradually came to understand it could never be. They became engaged in December 1819. When in February of the next year he suffered a massive hemorrhage, and offered to break the engagement, thus freeing Fanny, she refused. We can only hope her loyalty gave John some comfort.
From his brothers death, until his own, Keats produced some of the most haunting and immortal poems in the English language.

• When I Have Fears (1818)
• Hyperion (1818-1819)
• The Eve of St Agnes (1819)
• La Belle Dame Sans Merci (1819)
• On the Sonnet (1819)
• Ode to Psyche (1819)
• Ode to a Nightingale (1819)
• Ode on a Grecian Urn (1819)
• Ode on Melancholy (1819)
• To Autumn (1819)
• The Fall of Hyperion (1819)

Finally in February 1820 Keats realised he would have very little time to live, thus dashing his dreams of marriage to Fanny. In September of that year he sailed to Italy, with hopes that the warmer climate might buy him some time. Shelley had also invited him to stay with him. However by the time he arrived in Rome he was desperately ill. Taking lodgings at the 'Spanish Steps', he lingered on, nursed by what must be one of the most devoted friends ever, Joseph Severn. Keats died in Rome on 23 February 1821.
It shows something of his feelings at the time of his death, when he wanted his epitaph to read-
Here lies one whose name is writ in water
But the verses he wrote are written in the souls of those who came after. If only John could have known.

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.

Ode on Melancholy No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf's-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine; Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kissed By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not your rosary of yew-berries, Nor let the beetle nor the death-moth be Your mournful Psyche, nor the downy owl A partner in your sorrow's mysteries; For shade to shade will come too drowsily, And drown the wakeful anguish of the soul. But when the melancholy fit shall fall Sudden from heaven like a weeping cloud, That fosters the droop-headed flowers all, And hides the green hill in an April shroud; Then glut thy sorrow on a morning rose, Or on the rainbow of the salt sand-wave, Or on the wealth of globed peonies; Or if thy mistress some rich anger shows, Imprison her soft hand, and let her rave, And feed deep, deep upon her peerless eyes. She dwells with Beauty -Beauty that must die; And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh, Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips: Ay, in the very temple of Delight Veiled Melancholy has her sovran shrine, Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine: His soul shall taste the sadness of her might, And be among her cloudy trophies hung.