John Keats (1795-1821)

Sometimes poetry is the memorable expression of a commonplace thought.

Keats, more than most, was haunted by the threat of an early death. A dedicated poet, he wanted to be ‘amongst the English poets at my death’.

He died of Tuberculosis, in his mid twenties, a long way from home, coughing his lungs up in a rented room in Italy and he felt he’d failed. The epitaph he choose for himself, ‘here lies one whose name was writ in water’, sums up his disappointment.

Amongst the unfinished epics and plays, he’d written a handful of poems that guaranteed his place in any anthology of English poetry. But he didn't know that when he died.

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