John Keats (1795–1821) was an English Romantic poet whose career spanned six years, during which he published only fifty-four poems in three slim volumes. Trained to become a surgeon, he had no formal literary education but nonetheless developed into one of the greatest lyric poets in English. His work is characterized by an acute sense of the beauty in the natural world and the extremes of human desire, most notably in the odes, including “Ode to a Nightingale,” “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” and one of his best-loved long poems, “The Eve of St. Agnes.” He died from tuberculosis in Rome, where he is buried.
WORKS THAT HAVE APPEARED IN NARRATIVE:
- To Autumn, poetry, in Poems of the Week: 2018–2019