John Keats

Keats, John (1795–1821), English Romantic poet. He gave up medicine in 1816 to devote himself to poetry. The epic “Hyperion,” the ballad “La Belle Dame sans Merci,” and “The Eve of St. Agnes” were written about 1817. In May 1819 he wrote 4 great odes—“To a Nightingale,” “On a Grecian Urn,” “On Melancholy,” and “On Indolence.” “Lamia” and “To Autumn,” effectively his last works, followed that summer. In 1820 he developed tuberculosis and died in Rome at age 25.