John Keats

John Keats, was born in London on October 31 1795, he was the eldest of  four children. Although he died at the age of 25, he had one of the most remarkable career of all the English poets. He devoted his brief life to refining and perfecting poetry, characterised by vivid imagery and tremendous sensuous appeal.
John received relatively little formal education. Following the tragic death of his father in 1804 due to a riding accident, his mother soon remaried, consequently Keats and his two brothers and sister, to which the poet would have strong emotional ties for the entirity of his life, were sent to live with their grandmother. He was sent to study at a neraby school in Enfield, Keats was noted for being a bellicose lad but decidedly not a literary student but in 1809 he started to read voraciously. Following his mother’s death due to tuberculosis in 1810, the childrens grandmother put their affairs in the hands of a guardian Richard Abbey. In 1811 Mr Abbey encoraged young Keats to become an apprentice to a surgeon at Edmonton, but in 1814 he broke off his apprentiship and went to live in London, where he found employment as a junior surgeon at Guy’s and St Thomas’ hospitals. During this period his literary intrests developed further and in 1817 he entirely devoted himself to his poetry. From this moment onwards to his premature death, the story of his life is the narrative of the poetry that he wrote. Some of the most renowned works of the poet include: “The Eve of  S. Agnes“, “Ode On a Grecian Urn” and the ballad “La Belle Dam Sans Merci“. The poet  died of tuberculosis in Rome where he is burried in February 1821 at the age of 25. During the course of his life, Keats was little outside of literary circle and even here he was to a certain extent diregarded because his works were considered to be full of neglect and obscurity. Fortunately in Victorian times owing to the renowned critic Mathew Arnold there was a total reversal of judgment.

Ode on a Grecian Urn

Thou still unravish’d bride of quietness,
       Thou foster-child of silence and slow time,
Sylvan historian, who canst thus express
       A flowery tale more sweetly than our rhyme:
What leaf-fring’d legend haunts about thy shape
       Of deities or mortals, or of both,
               In Tempe or the dales of Arcady?
       What men or gods are these? What maidens loth?
What mad pursuit? What struggle to escape?
               What pipes and timbrels? What wild ecstasy?
 
Heard melodies are sweet, but those unheard
       Are sweeter; therefore, ye soft pipes, play on;
Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d,
       Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone:
Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not leave
       Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare;
               Bold Lover, never, never canst thou kiss,
Though winning near the goal yet, do not grieve;
       She cannot fade, though thou hast not thy bliss,
               For ever wilt thou love, and she be fair!
 
Ah, happy, happy boughs! that cannot shed
         Your leaves, nor ever bid the Spring adieu;
And, happy melodist, unwearied,
         For ever piping songs for ever new;
More happy love! more happy, happy love!
         For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,
                For ever panting, and for ever young;
All breathing human passion far above,
         That leaves a heart high-sorrowful and cloy’d,
                A burning forehead, and a parching tongue.

Who are these coming to the sacrifice?
         To what green altar, O mysterious priest,
Lead’st thou that heifer lowing at the skies,
         And all her silken flanks with garlands drest?
What little town by river or sea shore,
         Or mountain-built with peaceful citadel,
                Is emptied of this folk, this pious morn?
And, little town, thy streets for evermore
         Will silent be; and not a soul to tell
                Why thou art desolate, can e’er return.
 
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
         Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
         Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity: Cold Pastoral!
         When old age shall this generation waste,
                Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
         “Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
                Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.