Excerpt:

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.

The final of Keats' great odes and his final significant composition is To Autumn. Keats was in so much debt that he was forced to give up poetry. Furthermore, Keats passed away in Rome from the disease a little more than a year after this poem was published.

The poem, which has three stanzas of eleven lines each, focuses on a variety of subjects while celebrating the warm, abundant, and pleasant characteristics of the time of year. The piece has been interpreted in a variety of ways, including as an allegory for artistic production and as a meditation on death.

John Keats' composition To Autumn has received the most favorable reviews. It is widely acknowledged as one of the finest short poems ever written in English. Keats specialist Aileen Ward called it "Keats's most perfect and trouble-free poem," and English writer and critic Algernon Charles Swinburne called it "the closest to pure perfection" of Keats' odes.

Type: Ode
Published: 1820

Excerpt:

O Goddess! hear these tuneless numbers, wrung
By sweet enforcement and remembrance dear,
And pardon that thy secrets should be sung
Even into thine own soft-conched ear:
Surely I dreamt to-day, or did I see
The winged Psyche with awaken'd eyes?
I wander'd in a forest thoughtlessly,
And, on the sudden, fainting with surprise,
Saw two fair creatures, couched side by side
In deepest grass, beneath the whisp'ring roof
Of leaves and trembled blossoms, where there ran
A brooklet, scarce espied:

The four-stanza "Ode to Psyche" is one of Keats' odes' key organizational elements. Considering the variances in rhyme patterns, metrical patterns, and the number of lines, this provides for an intriguing literary study.

The goddess Psyche is mentioned in a poem by Keats, who calls her the most attractive Olympian goddess. He continues by saying that, unlike her Olympian colleagues, she lacks the trappings of adoration. She has no temples, altars, or choir to her name.

John Keats thinks that her youth and age are to blame for this. Keats claims he will become Psyche's priest through this ode and build a temple for her in his thoughts.

Due to the way in which it captures his ideal of love, which is only possible in one's mind, "Ode to Psyche" is a notable literary work.

Type: Ode

Published: 1819

Excerpt:

Thou wast not born for death, immortal Bird!
No hungry generations tread thee down;
The voice I hear this passing night was heard
In ancient days by emperor and clown:
Perhaps the self-same song that found a path
Through the sad heart of Ruth, when, sick for home,
She stood in tears amid the alien corn;
The same that oft-times hath
Charm'd magic casements, opening on the foam
Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn.

Keats spent the summer of 1819 with his friend Charles Armitage Brown. A nightingale had constructed a nest near their residence, according to Brown. Keats was sitting under a plum tree in the garden one morning when he was inspired by the singing of a bird and wrote this brilliant poem in a few hours.

Ode to a Nightingale is more than just a straightforward poem that expresses the speaker's joy at hearing the nightingale's song. In the poem, the nightingale's singing alters the speaker's perspective and causes them to reflect deeply on time, mortality, beauty, nature, and human suffering. Even though the speaker contrasts human mortality with the longevity of the nightingale's song, the poem's main theme is that nothing lasts.

The longest of the classic odes, Ode to a Nightingale has 80 lines. Ode to a Nightingale is John Keats' most well-known poem, in addition to being one of the most anthologized in the English language.

Type: Ode
Published: 1819

Excerpt:
She hurried at his words, beset with fears,
For there were sleeping dragons all around,
At glaring watch, perhaps, with ready spears—
Down the wide stairs a darkling way they found.—
In all the house was heard no human sound.
A chain-droop'd lamp was flickering by each door;
The arras, rich with horseman, hawk, and hound,
Flutter'd in the besieging wind's uproar;
And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.

Agnes of Rome was a member of the Roman nobility who was regarded as extremely attractive. Because she was a Christian, she was sentenced to be taken nude through the streets to a brothel. She was then executed by beheading. In the Roman Catholic Church, Agnes is considered a saint. She is a virgin and chastity patron saint. Saint Agnes' feast day is January 21. The title of this poem comes from the folk belief that on the eve of St. Agnes' feast day if a girl completed specific customs such as going to bed without supper and without glancing behind her, her future spouse would arrive in her dream.

The poem portrays the narrative of lovers Porphyro and Madeline, who come from opposing households. Madeline, who believes in the tale of St. Agnes' Eve, conducts the necessary rituals, and the story progresses from there. The Eve of St. Agnes is made up of 42 Spenserian iambic nine-line stanzas. ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ is one of John Keats’ more long and detailed poems. This poetry is filled with imagery that exemplifies natural sensuality, such as "brushing the cobwebs with his towering plume."

Keats penned this poem shortly after falling in love with Fanny Brawne in 1819. This poem is regarded by critics all over the world as Keats' celebration of his first romantic encounter. It is really descriptive poetry that piques the reader's interest. The poem was significant in 19th-century English literature and is regarded as one of Keats' finest works.

Type: Narrative Poem
Published: 1820

Poem:
Bright star, would I were stedfast 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 stedfast, still unchangeable,
Pillow'd 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.

Fanny Brawne is widely known today as John Keats' fiancée and muse. They first met in 1818 and secretly married in October 1819. Unfortunately, Keats was diagnosed with TB and died in February 1821. Brawne became known to the public in 1878 when Keats was already a world-renowned poet when intimate letters between her and Keats were published.

This poem, like most of his poems about Brawne, is difficult to date and can only be accomplished by supposition. It was first published in The Plymouth and Devonport Weekly Journal in 1838, 17 years after Keats' death. The fundamental topics of the poem are eternal love, death, and nature. Bright Star is John Keats' most well-known sonnet. Furthermore, it is his most famous poem, devoted to his love Fanny Brawne.

'Bright Star' is about a person who is madly in love and wants to spend eternity in their lover's embrace, madly in love enough to feel them breathe. Keats describes the individual as desperate to communicate this desire, implying that it has not yet been achieved.

One of the poem's most important components is that the reader is not provided any information about the speaker. Instead, the poem expresses a deep sense of love for another person.

In this poem, time and place are unimportant. The effect is intentional and reflects John Keats' intense feelings for Fanny Brawne.

Type: Shakespearean Sonnet
Published: 1838

Excerpt:

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."

The Elgin Marbles are a group of sculptures made of marble by the Athenians that were removed from the Parthenon and transported to England in 1806. The Elgin Marbles encounter with Keats served as a major source of inspiration for this poem. The same was true of writings by Benjamin Haydon that discussed, among other things, Greek sacrifice and worship. At Haydon's workplace, Keats also had access to prints of Greek urns.

The speaker describes and criticizes the images of the Grecian urn in Ode on a Grecian Urn, particularly one in which a lover pursues his beloved and one in which a sacrifice is being performed. The scenes both perplex and fascinate the speaker. The urn has preserved them for hundreds of years, but they are still locked in time. The poem's final phrase, "'Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.' - that is all / Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know," has been highly discussed and is one of Keats' most famous lines.

The reviewers of the day did not like Ode on a Grecian Urn. Its fame has grown with time, and it is today considered one of the most famous odes in English literature.

Type: Ode
Published: 1819

Excerpt:
I met a lady in the meads,
Full beautiful—a faery’s child,
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.

I made a garland for her head,
And bracelets too, and fragrant zone;
She looked at me as she did love,
And made sweet moan

This poem borrows its title from Alain Chartier's 15th-century courtly love ballad La Belle Dame sans Mercy, albeit it doesn't follow its plot. The poem's title, "The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy," is translated.

It primarily concentrates on the themes of love and death, like many of Keats' poetry. The poem describes a meeting between a knight and a stunning but enigmatic woman. She expresses her love for him but finally abandons him, leaving him in sorrow.

The first three stanzas of La Belle Dame sans Merci are a query to a knight, and the remaining nine are his response. Keats used the term "negative capability" in his poem to emphasize the value of intuition and doubt over reason and knowledge. It permits what is strange or uncertain to stay mysterious or doubtful.

In Keats' poetry, La Belle Dame Sans Merci is recognized as a prime example of "negative capacity." It is a widely popular poem that has been cited in numerous works of literature, music, art, and film.

Type: Ballad
Published: 1819

Excerpt:
A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.
Therefore, on every morrow, are we wreathing
A flowery band to bind us to the earth,
Spite of despondence, of the inhuman dearth

Greek mythology describes Endymion as a shepherd who won Selene (or Cynthia), the goddess of the moon, over with his beauty. Zeus fulfilled her request to give him perpetual youth and make him sleep for all time. After spending the night with Endymion, Selene had fifty daughters with him. Keats made Endymion the protagonist of his poem, but he altered the narrative by having Endymion fall hopelessly in love with Cynthia. The experiences of Endymion as he searches for his love are then described by Keats.

Endymion was Keats' first long poem. It is broken up into four pieces, each roughly 1,000 lines long, and is primarily composed of loosely rhymed couplets. Although the poem received harsh criticism when it was first published, it is still among Keats' best-known compositions today. One of the most well-known passages in English literature is its opening: "A piece of beauty is a joy for ever."

Type: Narrative Poem
Published: 1818

Excerpt:

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil'd Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy's grape against his palate fine;
His soul shalt taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

Keats' development as a poet occurred between the winter of 1818 and the majority of 1819. His most notable works, including the six famous odes "Ode on a Grecian Urn," "Ode on Indolence," "Ode on Melancholy," "Ode to a Nightingale," "Ode to Psyche," and "To Autumn," were written during this time.

In contrast to Keats' previous odes, the speaker in Ode on Melancholy addresses the reader directly rather than an item or a feeling. It is the smallest of Keats' famous odes, with only three stanzas of ten lines each. Additionally, he later deleted its opening verse, possibly because he felt it was unnecessary. He basically advises the reader in this verse to refrain from acting inappropriately in the face of sadness. He gives the reader advice on what to do in the second verse as an alternative to the things he forbids. He illustrates how pain and pleasure are inexorably intertwined in the final stanza.

Type: Ode
Published: 1820

Poem:

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

Keats spent a night reading poetry with his friend Charles Cowden Clarke in the autumn of 1816. Cowden exposed Keats to some of the best sections from George Chapman's 17th-century translation of Homer's masterpieces, the Iliad and Odyssey. Keats was ecstatic with the work, and when Cowden abandoned him, he penned his poem as a tribute to Chapman. He left a copy of it on his friend's breakfast table the next day as a gift.

Keats describes in the poem the excitement he felt while listening to his friend Clarke read to him from Chapman's Homer. He compares his finding of the work, among other things, to the intense excitement experienced by an astronomer who discovers a new planet or by Cortez the first time he saw the Pacific from a peak in Central America. It should be recalled that Balboa, not Cortez, was the first European to see the eastern Pacific coast.

On December 1, 1816, The Examiner published the first edition of On First Looking into Chapman's Homer. It was later included in Keats' first collection of poetry, considered to be his best work.

Type: Petrarchan Sonnet
Published: 1816