John Keats

Ode to a Nightingale — beauty, mortality, and the great odes

The most purely lyrical of the English Romantics and, despite a life cut short at twenty-five, one of the supreme poets of the language. In a single astonishing year Keats wrote the great odes — 'To a Nightingale,' 'On a Grecian Urn,' 'To Autumn' — meditations on beauty, transience, and art that fuse sensuous richness with philosophical depth. His letters, with their idea of 'negative capability,' are among the most illuminating ever written by a poet. He died of tuberculosis in Rome.

Key works

• Ode to a Nightingale1819— Ecstasy and mortality in the bird's song
  Poem
• Ode on a Grecian Urn1819— 'Beauty is truth, truth beauty'
  Poem
• To Autumn1819— The most perfect short poem in English
  Poem

Connections

External