The Poetry of John Keats

John Keats—a name that is synonymous with great romantic poetry and great romantic poets. Over the course of his short life, Keats produced a legacy of work that few can rival.

Keats was returning one night to his home in Hampstead when he coughed. He coughed a single drop of blue blood upon his hand and said, “I know the color of that blood, it is arterial blood, it is my death warrant, I must die.” And so it was that tuberculosis took its slow devastating hold. He moved to Rome hoping the warmer climate would help, but he died at the age of twenty-five in 1821.