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John Keats (1795-1821) lived fast, wrote brilliantly, and left behind some of the finest poetry in the English language. Born in London to a family of modest means, he lost his parents young and trained as a surgeon. But medicine was never his true calling-poetry was. By 1816, he abandoned scalpels for sonnets, drawn to the richness of language and the ideals of Romanticism. His early works weren't well received, but he kept writing, undeterred. In just a few years, he produced the odes that made him immortal-Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn-poems full of beauty, longing, and a quiet awareness of life's impermanence.
Tuberculosis, the disease that had taken his brother, soon took hold of him too. Hoping for a warmer climate, he moved to Italy in 1820, but Rome became his final home. He died at twenty-five, convinced he'd be forgotten. Time proved him wrong. Today, Keats is celebrated as one of the greatest poets of all time, his words as alive as ever, whispering of love, beauty, and fleeting moments that make life worth living. |