The Love Of Romantic Poetry By John Keats

During the time that John Keats was alive he was not a well-known poet, he was just another man walking the streets, but a few years after he died he changed the way that romantic poetry would be seen forever. Born on October 31 1795, he was the oldest of four children, with two younger brothers, and a younger sister. Keats and his family had a good life while Keats was still young. But, when Keats’ father got a head injury from falling off of a horse one afternoon, Keats life almost fell apart. After the passing of his father, Keats’ mother remarried. Two months into the marriage Keats mother left her new husband and ran off, leaving Keats and his younger siblings with their grandmother. Keats as a child was known as a good child, but was …show more content…
He worried that he would not have the opportunity to be in the spotlight of romantic poetry, in other words to be a well-known poet, being successful. He also worried that he would not be able to find the love of his life and spend the rest of his life with her. Keats knew that he was going to pass away before he was able to accomplish all of the things he had set his mind to. This is why Keats is so descriptive in his poem “What I Have Fears That I May Cease to be,” that he wrote in 1818. He wanted people to know how he felt and how disappointed he was that he had come to the conclusion that he was going to die …show more content…
The third and fourth line of his poem, he uses a metaphor that states, “Before high-pilèd books, in charactery, / Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain,” (Keats) suggesting that Keats would have written piles of books, filled with poetry, all of which would have carried his thoughts and feelings. Lisa M. Dagorn from Cedar Crest College believes that, "For the poet to die young would eliminate his chance of "harvesting" the fruits of his mind, which will become "ripen’d" only as a poet ages. These fruits which are his poetic works, grant the poet fame as in line 3, "Before high-piled books, in charact’ry". Here, Keat’s uses beautiful images in making us realize the transitory, that nothing is permanent” (Dagorn). In other words, Dagorn believes that if Keats would not have died at a young age he would have become wiser and he would have had more of the ability to make readers feel what he was feeling. Dagorn give an example as to what she believes Keats was trying to say. No matter what the reader get out of his words, the reader can still feel his pain, Keats wants to keep writing, but he knows the end is coming