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John Keats by Chen Fan (ES02169)



John Keats



John Keats was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets, along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley.


He died at the age of 25 in the year 1821. During his lifetime, he published only fifty-four poems, and his poems were not generally well received. However, His reputation grew after his death.
Most of Keats’s poetry describes the beauty of the natural world, he once said “beauty is truth, truth is beauty”. For example, his famous poems Ode to a Nightingale and To Autumn.

Here I want to share his last poetical work, the “bright star”. This sonnet is said to write for his beloved Fanny Brawne.

          Bright star, would I were steadfast as thou art---
          Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night 
          And watching, with eternal lids apart.
          Like nature's patient, sleepless Eremite.    
          The moving waters at their priestlike task
          Of pure ablution round earth's human shores.
           Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask
          Of snow upon the mountains and the moors---
          No-yet still steadfast, still unchangeable.
          Pillowed upon my fair love's ripening breast,
          To feel for ever its soft fall and swell,
          Awake for ever in a sweet unrest.
          Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath,
          And so live ever---or else swoon to death

Actually, at first, Keats felt uncomfortable with women and contemptuous of them, he would rather be solitary than get marry. But then he met Fanny Brawne, things changed. As he couldn't afford to have a wife, they kept the engagement a secret from all. His change of the opinion on women reflects that he was not a poet only living in the imagination or showing his loyalty to the highest good and beauty, but a normal person who would fall in love with a female. Therefore, this poem is often considered as one of the romantic poem in the world, and people usually use it to express their love. Besides, here coming a movie, which share the same name Bright Star, it tell us about their love story. I haven't seen it yet, maybe I will.






Anyway, the poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery. This is typical of romantic poets, as they aimed to accentuate extreme emotion through the emphasis of natural imagery. Till Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English literature.



Here lies one whose name written in water.

by :  Chen Fan (ES02169)

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