John Keats, who never got nearer to a university classroom than the front door, became in his quarter-century of life both a physician and one of the great English poets.

The author of An Ode to a Grecian Urn, Endymion, The eve of St. Agnes, LaBelle Dame sans merci, and many other poems, was born in a livery stable. He was orphaned when very young and, according to the customs of medical education in the early 19^th century, was apprenticed to a surgeon for study and training.

Keats worked for a short time as an apothecary assistant, physician, and surgeon after a comparatively brief study at St. Thomas's and Guy's Hospitals. However, his chief interest was in literature and, about 1816, he began to devote all of his time to writing. The young poet suffered from tuberculosis most of his life and died of the disease in Rome.

 

When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be

When I have fears that I may cease to be

Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,

Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,

Mold like full garners the full-ripened grains;

When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face,

Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,

And think that I may never live to trace

Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance;

And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,

that I shall never look upon thee more,

Never have relish in the faery power

Of unreflecting love; --then on the shore

Of the wide world I stand along, and think,

Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.

 

 

The Human Seasons

Four Seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man:

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span:

He has his Summer, when luxuriously

Spring's honied cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh

His nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness - to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook.

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forego his mortal nature.

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