Introduction

John Keats lived only twenty-five years and four months (1795-1821), yet his poetic
achievement is extraordinary. His writing career lasted a little more than five years (1814-1820),
and three of his great odes--"Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on
Melancholy"--were written in one month. Most of his major poems were written between his
twenty-third and twenty-fourth years, and all his poems were written by his twenty-fifth year. In
this brief period, he produced poems that rank him as one of the great English poets. He also
wrote letters which T.S. Eliot calls "the most notable and the most important ever written by any
English poet."

Keats belonged to a literary movement called romanticism. Romantic poets, because of their
theories of literature and life, were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a new form of
ode, often called the romantic meditative ode.

The critics describe the typical movement of the romantic ode: The poet, unhappy with the
real world, escapes or attempts to escape into the ideal. Disappointed in his mental flight, he
returns to the real world. Usually he returns because human beings cannot live in the ideal or
because he has not found what he was seeking. But the experience changes his understanding of
his situation, of the world, etc.; his views/feelings at the end of the poem differ significantly from
those he held at the beginning of the poem.

In English poetry there were six outstanding figures: William Blake, William
Wordsworth, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge from the first generation, and Lord Byron, Percy
Bysshe Shelley and John Keats from the second. These writers – none of whom would have
thought of himself as a Romantic poet – produced varied and individually very distinctive work.
They shared, nevertheless, a feeling that they were contributing to a period of enormous political,
social and intellectual change.

1
 1.1John Keats’ Biography

Keats was born on 31 October 1795 in London. He came from a comfortable trade background,
what once might have been called the lower middle classes, a growing group in Regency
England: his father, Thomas was, before his death from a riding accident in 1804, which did
reduce the family circumstances, manager of a livery stables; and his mother, Frances, whose
own death, from the ‘family disease’ tuberculosis, or consumption, in 1810, greatly influenced
the young Keats who nursed her, came from the relatively prosperous Jennings family. On her
remarriage she was involved in complex legal wrangles over the family fortune worthy of a
Dickens novel. At a time when it was possible to live well off under £200 a year, Keats’
grandmother settled about £9,000 on Keats and his two brothers and sister. Although it would
have enabled him to indulge in the life of a poet, which he would later crave, Keats saw little of
this money, and its true extent did not become clear until after his death. However, whatever his
privations after 1804, Keats background was in no sense one of absolute poverty.

Given his origins, it is not surprising that Keats and his brother George were sent to
Enfield Academy, run by John Clarke, between 1803 and 1811. What is surprising is the extent
to which he was held to be ‘uneducated’ by hostile reviewers during his lifetime, or to suffer
from ‘educational deficits’ by more recent critics (Levinson p. 7).

This view is derived from an odd mix of the Romantic concern with natural’ genius,
which was inherited by the Victorians who did so much to create the myth of ‘John Keats’, and
the Regency literary establishment’s distrust of middle class cultural aspirations. Whilst he was
denied the University education of Shelley, say, and whilst it is important to remember a young
Keats, always conscious of his diminutive stature, who was fond of cricket and fighting, such a
view is simply misleading. Something of the depth of Keats’ learning can be gleaned from the

recollections of Charles Cowden Clarke, John Clarke’s son and Keats’ friend. He recalls: such
was Keats’ indefatigable energy for the last two or three successive half-years ... that upon each
occasion he took first prize by a considerable distance. He was at work before the first school
hour began, and that was at seven ... at his Latin or French translation ... (Clarke p. 122)

Along with his contemporaries Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, John Keats is
considered to be perhaps the most remarkable and influential poet of the second generation of the
2
English Romantic movement. While Keats is now arguably the most closely studied and widely
read of the English Romantic poets, he was virtually unknown as a poet during his lifetime. His
poetry only achieved critical and popular recognition well after his death, during the 19th and

20th centuries.

Keats proved himself to be a brilliant student and thinker at a young age. He excelled in
the study of history and the classics, scholastic interests that would prove to have a tremendous

influence upon his later poetry. After his family life fell apart (Keats’s parents both died within
six years of each other), the teenage Keats became an apprentice to a surgeon and apothecary.
While his medical career consumed a great deal of his time, after finishing his apprenticeship,

Keats managed to produce what would later be considered some of the finest poetry of
the Romantic age. Keats’s life and poetry were greatly impacted by his love affairs with Frances

(Fanny) Brawne and Isabella Jones, relationships that would serve to influence his poetry and
darken his emotional well-being. Sickly throughout much of his life, Keats contracted
tuberculosis while caring for his brother, who was dying from the disease. Keats himself died of

tuberculosis at the age of 24. He was elegized by his friend Percy Shelley in the great poem
“Adonis.”( Gittings p. 17).

There is no doubt about John Keats's permanent place among the English poets. But in

spite of his exceptional talent Keats could never have achieved the admirable blend of beautiful
form and truthful content that characterises his best verse, if he had not devoted so much time
and energy to the study of great literature, from Chaucer to Shelley and from Homer to Schiller.

Considering the "brief candle" of his life, the amount, extent and variety of his reading is
amazing. At the same time, his intellectual interests and social activities were by no means
limited to literature. He enjoyed and appreciated not only poetry, but also the beauty of nature
and art, the Elgin Marbles as well as living men and women. He proved an excellent student of
medicine and was well informed about contemporary science, philosophy and politics. The
mainspring of his highest poetic endeavours was indeed the search for truth as well as beauty, the

3
two aspects of reality which he had finally come to regard as essentially identical. A poem or any
work of art was to be a concrete realisation of beautiful truth or truthful beauty.

In his search for a proper understanding of the business and aim of poetry, of the
legitimate place of the poet in society, as well as of his own education for the vocation of poet,
Keats was greatly assisted by the study of great writers, ancient, medieval and modern, foreign
and English. A complete list of the books he had read has not yet been compiled.1 But we know
that his most influential models and masters were, with few exceptions, those who loved
humanity and stood on the side of progress.

As an ardent humanist and progressive romanticist, Keats was naturally attracted to

Except in his earliest period, however, Keats's attitude to books and authors was seldom
uncritical. The only poet with whom he never found any fault was Shakespeare. From his other
favourites he drew whatever he regarded as true and beautiful and rejected at once, or after a
time, whatever disagreed with his experience and mature judgement. He never hesitated to alter
his opinion of an author or book when his own development made such a change of taste or view
inevitable. Among the most marked instances of this kind of radical change are Keats's later
views concerning the poetry and character of Wordsworth, Byron, Leigh Hunt or Milton.

4
 1.2 The literary background of Keats’ age

The age of Keats is called the romantic age in literature. Keats himself is one of the great

romantic poets of England. Therefore, in order to understand his poetry it is essential to form an

idea of the nature and chief characteristics of romanticism.

Romanticism saw a shift from faith in reason to faith in the senses, feelings, and

imagination; a shift from interest in urban society to an interest in the rural and natural; a shift

from public, impersonal poetry to subjective poetry; and from concern with the scientific and

mundane to interest in the mysterious and infinite. Mainly they cared about the individual,

intuition, and imagination.

1. Imagination and emotion are more important than reason and formal rules; imagination is

a gateway to transcendent experience and truth.

2. Along the same lines, intuition and a reliance on “natural” feelings as a guide to conduct

are valued over controlled, rationality.

3. Romantic literature tends to emphasize a love of nature, a respect for primitivism, and a

valuing of the common, "natural" man; Romantics idealize country life and believe that many of

the ills of society are a result of urbanization.

a. Nature for the Romantics becomes a means for divine revelation (Wordsworth)

b. It is also a metaphor for the creative process—(the river in “Kublai Khan).

4. Romantics were interested in the Medieval past, the supernatural, the mystical, the “gothic,”

and the exotic;

5. Romantics were attracted to rebellion and revolution, especially concerned with human

rights, individualism, and freedom from oppression;

5
 6. There was emphasis on introspection, psychology, melancholy, and sadness. The art

often dealt with death, transience and mankind’s feelings about these things. The artist was an

extremely individualistic creator whose creative spirit was more important than strict adherence

to formal rules and traditional procedures.

a. The Byronic hero

b. Emphasis on the individual and subjectivity.

The poems often represented the working-out of poetic theory itself, dreams, childhood

and innocence were common themes, the influence of French Revolution and other political

events was visible, concern with the inner self: the poems are mainly explorations of the poet’s

mind, heavy symbolism, influenced by theories of association and drugs, adapted myths and

images from several non-European cultures, a revelatory or prophetic tone is seen in many poets,

obsession with death and unconscious states. ( Pramod K. Nayar, p: 210)

The term romanticism has been variously defined by various writers. Walter Pater, for

example, calls it “the addition of strangeness to beauty” and Watts Danton defines it as “the

renaissance of wonder”. Goethe, the German poet critic, contrast romanticism with classicism

and says “romanticism is disease, classicism is health”. Abercrombie, on the other hand, stresses

the subjective element of romanticism and writes “Romanticism is a withdrawal from outer

experience to concentrate upon inner experience”. Herford calls it extraordinary development of

imaginative sensibility.

All such definitions are, however, unsatisfactory and partial, for they emphasize one or the

other elements of this type of literature instead of giving a composite view. It would, therefore be

more profitable to consider the silent features of English romanticism. They are the followings:

6
 Subjectivity-all romantic literature is subjective; it is an expression of the inner urges of

the soul of the artist. The poet does not care for rules and regulations; but gives free expression

to his emotions. Emphasis is laid on inspiration and intuition rather than on the observance of set

rules. The poet writes according to his fancy, and is often guilty of wild excesses. Hence it is

criticized as an irregular and wild.

Spontaneity-romantic poetry is spontaneous overflow of powerful passion. The romantic

poet is gifted with a strong ‘organic sensibility’: he feels more than there is to feel and sees more

than there is to see. Even ordinary objects and incidents excite his imagination and set up in him

powerful passions. When the mood on him, i.e., when he is so excited, he sings in strains of

unpremeditated art. He cannot write to order; poetry for him is not craft but inspiration. Carried

away by his powerful passions and excited imagination, the poet does not care for the perfection

of form or clarity of expression. Substance is more important for him than the form.

Love of the supernatural- the romantic is extraordinarily alive to the wonder, mystery

and beauty of the universe. He feels the presence of unseen powers in nature. This unseen

transcendental world is more real for him than the world of the senses. The supernatural has a

special charm for him-he is attracted by the stories of fairies, ghosts and witchcraft. His poetry is

an expression of his wonder at the magic and mystery of the universe. Supernaturalism is an

important element in romantic inspiration. This often makes his poetry mystical and remote from

the everyday expressions of life.

Melancholy- a romantic is a dissatisfied individual. He may be dissatisfied with the

circumstances of his own life, with his age, with literary conventions and traditions of the day, or

with the general fate of humanity. Romantic poetry is, therefore, often pessimistic in tone. A

romantic may revolt against the existing conditions and may seek to reform them, or he may try

7
to escape into the imaginative world of his own creation. Often he escapes into the past. The

middle ages have a special fascination for him, for they not only provide him an escape from the

sordid realities of the present, but also delight his heart by their color, pageantry and magic. The

remote, the distance, and the unknown delight him for this very reason.

While some escape into the past (the world of classical antiquity or the middle ages),

others may dream of a better and happier world to come and built ‘utopias’ of the future. They

may see visions of a golden age, and sing of it in their poetry. Revolutionary idealism

characterizes much of the romantic poetry; much of it is visionary in tone.

Love of Nature- still others may escape into nature. Beauties of the external world

characterize all romantic poetry. The romantics carry us away from the suffocating atmosphere

of critics into the fresh and invigorating company of the out of door world. They not only sing of

the sensuous beauty of nature, but also see into the ‘heart of things’ and reveal the soul that lies

behind.

Love of Nature leads, by an easy transition, to the love of those who live in her lap.

The romantics have an instinct for the elemental simplicities of life. Their heart overflow with

sympathy for the poor and the down-trodden. They try to see into the heart of man and

understand human nature. They find the divine in man, plead for his emancipation from all

bondage, and claim equal rights and liberties for the humblest. The Romantic Movement thus

becomes a part of the general democratic movement. (Dr. Raghukul. Tilak, p: 1-3)

Romanticism is a revolt against all artificiality; it stands for simplicity in theme and

treatment. Not only do the romantics treat the common man, they also use his language for their

purposes. Thus Wordsworth raised his voice against the inane and artificial diction of the 18th

century classics, and advocated the use of the language of common man for purpose of poetry.

8
 Their interest in the past leads to experiment with old metres and poetic forms. The 18th

century had confined itself to the use only of one metre, i.e., ‘the heroic couplet’. With the

coming of the romantics there is a revival of number of ancient metres. The Spenserian stanza,

the ballad metre, the blank verse, the lyric, the ode and the sonnet are all revived and soon attain

wide popularity.

English romanticism is thus both a revolt and a revival; it is a revolt against 18th century

traditions and conventions; it is a revival of ancient metres and ancient masters of poetry.

Works cited

Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (1878), Fontwell, London 1969 P.P Howe ed.,
The Compete Works of William Hazlitt 21 vols., J.M Dent, London1934
Dr. Raghukul Tilak. “John Keats: Select Poems”, Meeru (U.P): Rajhans Agencies, 2006.

Finney, Claude Lee: The Evolution of Keats's Poetry, Harvard U. P. 1936, pp. 26—27.

Majorie Levinson, Keats’ Life of Allegory, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1989

Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2011.

Robert Gittings, John Keats, Penguin, Harmonsworth 1968

9
 Chapter two

2.1 Keats as a Romantic poet

Keats belonged to a literary movement called romanticism. Romantic poets, because of

their theories of literature and life, were drawn to lyric poetry; they even developed a new form

of ode, often called the romantic meditative ode.

Keats was born in1795 to a lower-middle-class family in London. When he was still

young, he lost both his parents. His mother succumbed to tuberculosis, the disease that

eventually killed Keats himself. When he was fifteen, Keats entered into a medical

apprenticeship, and eventually he went to medical school. But by the time he turned twenty, he

abandoned his medical training to devote himself wholly to poetry. He published his first book of

poems in1817; they drew savage critical attacks from an influential magazine, and his second

book attracted comparatively little notice when it appeared the next year. Keats’s brother Tom

died of tuberculosis in December 1818, and Keats moved in with a friend in Hampstead.

In Hampstead, he fell in love with a young girl named Fanny Brawne. During this time, Keats

began to experience the extraordinary creative inspiration that enabled him to write, at a frantic

rate, all his best poems in the time before he died. His health and his finances declined sharply,

and he set off for Italy in the summer of 1820, hoping the warmer climate might restore his

health. He never returned home. His death brought to an untimely end one of the most

extraordinary poetic careers of the nineteenth century—indeed, one of the most extraordinary

poetic careers of all time. He died barely a year after finishing the ode “To Autumn,” in

February 1821. Keats never achieved widespread recognition for his work in his own life (his

bitter request for his tombstone: “Here lies one whose name was writ on water”), but he was

10
sustained by a deep inner confidence in his own ability. Shortly before his death, he remarked

that he believed he would be among “the English poets” when he had died. (web 1)

Keats stands among the greatest of English poets, not merely in promise but in

performance. He drew his inspiration from some of the best of his predecessors Spencer, Milton,

and Dryden and his influence has been profound upon the best of his successors, Tennyson,

Swinburne and Morris. He is thus a far more important link in the chain of English poetry than

Shelley, with whom it is usual to compare him on account of the similarity of their work, the

closeness of their birth, and even closeness of their tragic deaths. (B.P. Chaudhuri, p: 403).

Keats is a unique phenomenon on more ways than one. He was the last to be born and
the first to die in the history of English Romanticism. His powers matured rapidly and all his
work was done within short period of time. Moreover, while all other romantics were influenced
profoundly by the political and social aims of the French Revolution, Keats remained unaffected
by them. “In his poetry, he ever tries to escape from ‘the weariness, the fever, and the fret’ of
life, into an imaginary world of beauty, says S.A. Brooke.
In Keats we find the pursuit of the unknown beauty in ample measure. He is of

imagination all compact and imaginatively he can enjoy beauties which are hidden from the

physical eye. Thus the song of the nightingale becomes for him a symbol of eternal beauty and

imaginatively he can reach the ‘melodious plot’ of beechen green where the bird is singing, and

enjoying the manifold natural charms of the place.

Dissatisfaction with the present order of things is the keynote of romanticism.

Frustrated with life in the present, Keats escapes imaginatively into the ancient world of Hellas,

or into the middle ages. Keats is also fully alive to the supersensous world. It is the magic and

mystery, the belief in ghosts and fairies, of the middle ages, that captivate his heart.

The romantics were the great lovers of nature and Keats was no exception. He loved the

sensuous beauty of nature with all the glow of a lover. He loved nature just for its own sake and

11
for the glory and loveliness which he everywhere found in it, and no modern poet has ever been

nearer than he was to the simple poetry of earth; but there was nothing mystical in the love and

nature was never fraught for him, as for Wordsworth and Shelley, with spiritual messages and

meanings. (W. H. Hudson, p: 205). His personification of nature is extraordinarily vivid, and like

the Greeks, he peoples all nature with the gods and goddesses of pagan mythology.

The poetry of Keats also, like that of the romantics in general, is a spontaneous

outpouring of the heart. An object of beauty inspires him to instant creativity. He hears the song

of a nightingale, is thrilled by it, and within a few hours composes the Ode to the Nightingale,

one of the richest Odes in the language. His poetry has a haunting music of its own and this

captivating music comes to him by nature.

Keats is the most fragrant flower of English romanticism. He has already come into

contact with the fact of human suffering, has realized the temporary nature of things human, and

so a veiled melancholy permeates the great Odes. His yearning for beauty that endures is here

fused with the ‘bitter sweet voluptuousness enclosed in the impassioned meditation on death’.

Keats is a poet par excellence of the pain of joy, and joy of pain. “His pessimism is deeper and

more significant than that of Byron: it has not its secret source in any tragic mystery and it is thus

much more inevitable”.

The literary critic Jack Stillinger describes the typical movement of the romantic ode:

The poet, unhappy with the real world, escapes or attempts to escape into the ideal. Disappointed

in his mental flight, he returns to the real world. Usually he returns because human beings cannot

live in the ideal or because he has not found what he was seeking. But the experience changes his

understanding of his situation, of the world, etc.; his views/feelings at the end of the poem differ

significantly from those he held at the beginning of the poem. (web 2)

12
 John Keats lived only twenty-five years and four months (1795-1821), yet his poetic

achievement is extraordinary. His writing career lasted a little more than five years (1814-1820),

and three of his great odes--"Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode on a Grecian Urn," and "Ode on

Melancholy"--were written in one month. Most of his major poems were written between his

twenty-third and twenty-fourth years, and all his poems were written by his twenty-fifth year. In

this brief period, he produced poems that rank him as one of the great English poets. He also

wrote letters which T.S. Eliot calls "the most notable and the most important ever written by any

English poet."

His genius was not generally perceived during his lifetime or immediately after his death.

Keats, dying, expected his poetry to be forgotten, as the epitaph he wrote for his tombstone

indicates: "Here lies one whose name was writ in water." But nineteenth century critics and

readers did come to appreciate him, though, for the most part, they had only a partial

understanding of his work. They saw Keats as a sensual poet; they focused on his

vivid, concrete imagery; on his portrayal of the physical and the passionate; and on his

immersion in the here and now. One nineteenth century critic went so far as to assert not merely

that Keats had "a mind constitutionally inapt for abstract thinking," but that he "had no mind."

Keats's much-quoted out cry, "O for a life of Sensation rather than of Thoughts!" (Letter,

November 22, 1817) has been cited to support this view.

As Wordsworth’s work is too often marred by the moralizer, and Byron’s by the

demagogue, and Shelley’s by the reformer, so Keats’s work suffers by the opposite extreme of

aloofness from every human interest; so much so, that he is often accused of being indifferent to

humanity. His works also criticized as being too effeminate for ordinary readers. (William J.

Long, p: 423)

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 2.2 Origin and Development of the Ode

The word ‘ode’ is simply the Greek word for ‘song’. It was used by Greeks for any

kind of lyric verse, i.e. for any song sung with the lyre. The Ode is a special kind of lyric, more

dignified, stately and elaborate than the simple lyric. Traditionally, the ode is lengthy, serious in

subject matter, elevated in its diction and style, and often elaborate in its stanzaic structure. There

were two classical prototypes, one Greek, the other Roman. The first was established by Pindar,

a Greek poet, who modeled his odes on the choral songs of Greek drama. They were encomiums,

i.e., written to give public praise, usually to athletes who had been successful in the Olympic

Games. What is called in English the regular or Pindaric ode imitates this pattern; the most

famous example is Thomas Gray's "The Progress of Poesy." The early English odes, and many

later ones, were also written to eulogize something such as a person (John Dryden’s “Anne

Killigrew”), or the arts of music or poetry (Dryden’s “Alexander’s Feast”), ode a time of day

(Collins, “Ode to Evening”), or abstract concepts (Gray’s “Hymn to Adversity” and

Wordsworth’s “Ode to Duty”). (M.H. Abrams, p: 235).

As the ode developed in England, poets modified the Pindaric form to suit their own

purposes and also turned to Roman models. In 1656, Abraham Cowley introduced the "irregular

ode," which imitated the Pindaric style and retained the serious subject matter, but opted for

greater freedom. This "irregular" stanzaic structure, which created different patterns to accord

with changes of mood or subject, became a common English tradition. Poets also turned to an

ode form modeled after the Roman poet, Horace. The Horatian ode employed uniform stanzas,

each with the same metrical pattern, and tended generally to be more personal, more meditative,

and more restrained. Keats' "Ode to Autumn" and Wordsworth's "Ode to Duty" are Horatian

odes.

14
 Romantic poets perfected the personal ode of description and passionate meditation,

which is stimulated by (and sometimes at its close reverts to) an aspect of the outer scene and

turns on the attempt to solve either a personal emotional problem or generally human one

(Wordsworth’s “Intimations ode”, Coleridge’s “Dejection: An Ode”, Shelley’s “Ode to the West

Wind”).

The Romantic meditative ode was developed from these varying traditions. It tended

to combine the stanzaic complexity of the irregular ode with the personal meditation of the

Horatian ode, usually dropping the emotional restraint of the Horatian tradition. However, the

typical structure of the new form can best be described, not by traditional stanzaic patterns, but

by its development of subject matter. There are usually three elements: the description of a

particularized outer natural scene; an extended meditation, which the scene stimulates, and which

may be focused on a private problem or a universal situation or both; the occurrence of an insight

or vision, a resolution or decision, which signals a return to the scene originally described, but

with a new perspective created by the intervening meditation.

Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," Coleridge's "Dejection: An Ode," and

Shelley's "Ode to the West Wind," are examples, and Keats' "Ode to a Nightingale," while

Horatian in its uniform stanzaic form, reproduces the architectural format of the meditative

soliloquy, or, it may be, intimate colloquy with a silent auditor.

Edmund Gosse defines the ode as “a strain of enthusiastic and exalted lyric verse directed

to a fixed purpose, and dealing progressively with one dignified theme.” From these definitions,

the essentials of an English Ode may be summed up as;

1. It is the form of an address, often to some abstraction. It is not written about but written

to.

15
2. It has lyric enthusiasm and emotional intensity. It is a spontaneous over-flow of the

poets’ emotions.

3. Its theme is dignified and exalted. It has ‘high seriousness.’

4. Its style is equally elevated; it is also sufficiently long to allow for the full development

of its dignified theme.

5. The development of thought is logical and clear.

6. Its metrical pattern may be regular or irregular, but it is always elaborate and often

complex and intricate.( Dr. Raghukul Tilak, p: 34)

16
 Works cited:

1. Pramod. K. Nayar. “A Short History of English Literature”, New Delhi: Cambridge

University Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2011.

2. Dr. Raghukul Tilak. “John Keats: Select Poems”, Meeru (U.P): Rajhans Agencies, 2006.

3. Web 1, http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/context.html.

4. B.P. Chaudhuri. ”A History of English Literature from the age of Chaucer to the

twentieth century”, New Delhi-8: Aarti Book Centre, 1974.

5. W. H. Hudson. “An outline History of English Literature”, Delhi: AITBS Publishers,

2011.

6. Web 2, http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html.

7. William J. Long. “English Literature”, Delhi: AITBS Publishers, 2003.

Web 3, http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/themes.html

M. H. Abrams. “A Glossary of Literary Terms”, Canada: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2009.

17
 Conclusion

John Keats had as much sensitivity toward the natural world as any author of the period. From
his earliest lyrical fragments and letters to the great odes of 1819, his writing consistently
incorporates an astonishing number of natural images, as well as countless descriptions of
animals and plants. Keats studied medicine–he had the complete training necessary to become a
doctor–before he turned his attention to poetry. Partly as a result, his language often reflects keen
scientific awareness and an almost clinical observational skill. His medical studies inform his
poetry in complex and important ways. He manages to link scientific accuracy to the poetic
imagination in a way that essentially characterizes a Romantic version of natural history. At the
same time, his words and their arrangement reveal a sensitivity to rhythm, meter, and poetic tone
that has not been equalled in the English tongue since Shakespeare.

In his short life, John Keats wrote some of the most beautiful and enduring poems in the
English language. Among his greatest achievements is his sequence of six lyric odes, written
between March and September 1819—astonishingly, when Keats was only twenty-four years
old. Keats’s poetic achievement is made all the more miraculous.

Though Keats worked tirelessly on his poetry during his relatively short life, his
reputation as a poet rests on a rather small collection of poems, particularly his odes, which are

generally regarded as the finest and most passionate and insightful lyrical odes in the English

language. Odes such as “To Autumn,” “Ode to Psyche,” and “Ode on a Nightingale”

18
 Bibliography
1. B.P. Chaudhuri. ”A History of English Literature from the age of Chaucer to the

twentieth century”, New Delhi-8: Aarti Book Centre, 1974.

2. Charles Cowden Clarke, Recollections of Writers (1878), Fontwell, London 1969 P.P
Howe ed., The Compete Works of William Hazlitt 21 vols., J.M Dent, London1934
3. Dr. Raghukul Tilak. “John Keats: Select Poems”, Meeru (U.P): Rajhans Agencies, 2006.

4. Finney, Claude Lee: The Evolution of Keats's Poetry, Harvard U. P. 1936, pp. 26—27.
5. http://academic.brooklyn.cuny.edu/english/melani/cs6/keats.html.

6. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/context.html.

7. http://www.sparknotes.com/poetry/keats/themes.html
8. M. H. Abrams. “A Glossary of Literary Terms”, Canada: Wadsworth Cengage Learning,

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9. Majorie Levinson, Keats’ Life of Allegory, Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1989

University Press India Pvt. Ltd., 2011.

12. Robert Gittings, John Keats, Penguin, Harmonsworth 1968

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14. William J. Long. “English Literature”, Delhi: AITBS Publishers, 2003.

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