Keats' grave in Rome John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821[1]) was one of the principal poets of the English Romantic movement. During his short life, his work received constant critical attacks from the periodicals of the day, but his posthumous influence on poets such as Alfred Tennyson has been immense. Elaborate word choice and sensual imagery characterize Keats's poetry, including a series of odes that were his masterpieces and which remain among the most popular poems in English literature. Keats's letters, which expound on his aethestic theory of "negative capability", are among the most celebrated by any writer. Life and Death masks, RomeJohn Keats was born in 1795 at 85 Moorgate in London, where his father, Thomas Keats, was a hostler. The pub is now called "Keats The Grove", only a few yards from Moorgate station. Keats was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and lived happily for the first seven years of his life. The beginnings of his troubles occurred in 1804, when his father died from a fractured skull after falling from his horse. His mother, Frances Jennings Keats, remarried soon afterwards, but quickly left the new husband and moved herself and her four children (a son had died in infancy) to live with Keats' grandmother, Alice Jennings. There, Keats attended a school that first instilled in him a love of literature. In 1810, however, his mother died of tuberculosis, leaving him and his siblings in the custody of their grandmother. Keats' grandmother appointed two guardians to take care of her new "charges", and these guardians removed Keats from his old school to become a surgeon's apprentice. This continued until 1814, when, after a fight with his master, he left his apprenticeship and became a student at Guy's Hospital. During that year, he devoted more and more of his time to the study of literature. Keats travelled to the Isle of Wight in the spring of 1819, where he spent a week. Later that year he stayed in Winchester. It was in Winchester that Keats wrote Isabella, St. Agnes' Eve and Lamia. Parts of Hyperion and the five-act poetic tragedy Otho The Great were also written in Winchester.
to a little invisible being who is expected soon to become visible
Germ of new life, whose powers expanding slow
For many a moon their full perfection wait,--...[read poem]
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For many a moon their full perfection wait,--...
the rights of women
Yes, injured Woman! rise, assert thy right!
Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
O ...[read poem]
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Woman! too long degraded, scorned, opprest;
O ...
dirge: written november 1808
Pure spirit! O where art thou now!
O whisper to my soul!
O let some soothing thought ...[read poem]
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O whisper to my soul!
O let some soothing thought ...
bright star, would i were steadfast as thou art
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art--
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nig...[read poem]
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Not in lone splendour hung aloft the nig...
a thought on death: november, 1814
When life as opening buds is sweet,
And golden hopes the fancy greet,
And Youth prepares h...[read poem]
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And golden hopes the fancy greet,
And Youth prepares h...
to mr. barbauld, november 14, 1778
Come, clear thy studious looks awhile,
'T is arrant treason now
To wear that...[read poem]
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'T is arrant treason now
To wear that...
an inventory of the furniture in dr. priestley's study
A map of every country known,
With not a foot to call his own.
A list of folks that kicked...[read poem]
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With not a foot to call his own.
A list of folks that kicked...
on first looking into chapman's homer
Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;...[read poem]
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And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;...
to mrs. p********, with some drawings of birds and insects
The kindred arts to please thee shall conspire,
One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre....[read poem]
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One dip the pencil, and one string the lyre....
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