Keats

John Keats personified the tragic hero which the poets of the Romantic period sought to emulate. Unlike the other poets, he was not born into the upper classes, which made him much more accessible to the everyday person. Tragedy struck him at an early age when Tuberculosis took his brother. The pain and grief which this event caused becomes evident in lines such as “my heart aches, and drowsy numbness pains.” As many of the poets of this period showed, tragedy can also bring out the best in people. Keats refused to bow to his unfortunate circumstances; instead he used them as motivation. Just two years before his death, when his health began to deteriorate he wrote the majority of his pieces.
Keats did not use his poetry to accomplish certain things as Shelley and Lord Byron did. He simply wrote for the sheer beauty of it. To me, this is what separates him from his contemporaries. While they all appreciated beauty, especially in nature, Keats was the only one who wrote simply for the pleasure of it. The titles of his odes such as “ode to a Nightingale,” and “Ode to a Grecian Jar” convey the beauty and joy he found in everyday objects. His poetry includes numerous allusions so Classical Mythology., and they are almost always used as adjectives. Although he enjoyed the simplicity of nature, lines such as “That I might drink, and leave the world unseen/” convey his disillusionment with life, probably brought on by his deteriorating health and the death of his brother. His poems offer stark contrast between the happiness and life and the inevitable coldness of death.