“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:

To Solitude:

La Belle Dame Sans Merci: