Poems

John Keats died of tuberculosis in Rome in 1821 at the age of twenty-five, after barely five years of serious writing, and he left some of the most loved poems in English. Readers come for the odes of 1819, to a nightingale, to autumn, on a Grecian urn with its 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty', and for his sonnets and narrative poems full of colour, taste and touch.

Keats asked that his grave carry no name, only the words 'Here lies one whose name was writ in water.' His letters, which show a brilliant mind at work, are worth seeking out too. Read Endymion for his first long poem, and Lyrical Ballads for the poets who came just before him.

John Keats (1795–1821) was the son of a London stable keeper, lost both parents young, and trained as a surgeon at Guy's Hospital before giving up medicine for poetry. His first books were savagely reviewed, but in a few months of 1819, while nursing his grief for his brother Tom and in love with Fanny Brawne, he wrote the great odes.

Already ill with tuberculosis, he went to Rome hoping the climate would save him, and died there at twenty-five. His Poems and Endymion, together with his remarkable letters, made him one of the most loved poets in English.