John Keats

                   John Keats (pronounced /ˈkiːts/; 31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the Romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death.

                 During his life, his poems were not generally well received by critics; however, after his death, his reputation grew to the extent that by the end of the 19th century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He has had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers: Jorge Luis Borges, for instance, stated that his first encounter with Keats was the most significant literary experience of his life.

                The poetry of Keats is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are considered as among the most popular and analyzed in English literature.

Works

The Odes of 1819  
Ode on Indolence  
Ode to Psyche
Ode to a Nightingale
Ode on a Grecian Urn
Ode on Melancholy
To Autumn
La Belle Dame Sans Merci
Song of the Indian Maid, from Endymion
On first looking into Chapman's Homer
The Eve of St Agnes
The Human Seasons
Lines on the Mermaid Tavern
In drear-nighted December
Asleep
Dedication. To Leigh Hunt, Esq.
Fancy
Imitation of Spenser
Sonnets 
Bright Star! would I were steadfast as thou art
When I have fears that I may cease to be
On Fame
To Some Ladies
On receiving a curious shell, and a copy of verses, by the same ladies
Robin Hood. To a friend.
Woman! when I behold thee flippant, vain

Ode   A lyric poem of some length, usually of a serious or meditative nature and having an elevated style and formal stanzaic structure.

Sonnet   A 14-line verse form usually having one of several conventional rhyme schemes.

Romantic Poetry 

Romanticism largely began as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day. Inevitably, the characterization of a broad range of contemporaneous poets and poetry under the single unifying name can be viewed more as an exercise in historical compartmentalization than an attempt to capture the essence of the actual ‘movement’. Indeed, the term “Romanticism” did not arise until the Victorian period. Nonetheless, poets such as William Wordsworth were actively engaged in trying to create a new kind of poetry that emphasized intuition over reason and the pastoral over the urban, often eschewing modern forms and language in an effort to use ‘new’ language.

English Romantic Poets

• William Blake
• George Gordon Byron
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge
• P B Shelley
• William Wordsworth
• John Keats