Being an ardent lover of poetry, to be more specific, romantic

poetry, I have always been fascinated with the sense of oneness I

feel with the poets' world. Romantic poetry, for some of its major
attributes like pictorial quality, imagery, mysticism, absorption in
the beauty and life of nature, classical features and above all,
celebration of beauty and aestheticism---has a huge amount of
appeal to the highly refined and sophisticated readers of all times.
And surprisingly, it is this pictorial quality, sensuous delight in
nature, sheer artistic beauty and richness of imagery unfolded by
romantic poets that continue to inspire us in some way even after
so many years!
When we come to think of the Romantic poets, the name John
Keats, the finest flower of the Romantic Movement-comes foremost
on our minds. Deeply revered as one of the greatest word-painters
in English poetry, his verses present subtle imagery and a fusion of
different sensations that has time and again, produced musical
effects, and in that, he was rather a conscious artist.
The age of Keats and the literary influence on Keats:
The Romantic era, as history says, was the time when almost the
whole of Europe was intensely shaken by the ideas and ideologies
of the French Revolution. Major poets of that period were greatly
inspired by the personal and political liberty of the revolution,
breaking the bonds of the artistic conventions of the 18th century.
Those were the times when these ideas and ideals "awaked the
youthful passion of Wordsworth, of Coleridge", "stirred the wrath of
Scott" and "worked like yeast on Byron"... However, Keats was
distinguished from his contemporary poets and literary figures in
the fact that the excitement and the turmoil that gathered round
the revolution was not directly represented in his poetry. Thus
saying, it is worth mentioning that some portions of 'Hyperion', 'Fall
of Hyperion', and 'Endymion' do bear testimony to that fact that
Keats was influenced by the political turmoil - but it's definitely not
as pronounced as the works of Wordsworth, Coleridge, or Shelley.
His poetry, on the other hand, was an embodiment of his vision of
beauty that he sees everywhere in nature, in art, in human deeds
of chivalry and in the fascinating tales of ancient Greece. This in
fact, was the profoundest and the most innermost experience of

Keats' soul, which he expresses most emphatically in his 'Ode on a

Grecian Urn':
"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty', that is all/ Ye know on earth, and
all ye need to know."
Tracing his poetic growth, researchers have found out that he was
educated almost exclusively by the English poets. While in the early
part of his career, the influence of Edmund Spenser, specially his
'Faerie Queene', was instrumental in awakening his imaginative
genius; the brooding love of sensuous beauty, the luxuriance of
fancy and the response to the charm of nature characteristic of
Spenser's poems were to be re-echoed in Keats' poems. In the later
years, critics have cited the influence of Shakespeare, Milton, and
even Wordsworth in his poems. While the influx of Shakespearean
words, allusions find expression in the 1817 volume of his
'Endymion', he was also greatly influenced by the distinctive spirit
and vocabulary of the old English poets, especially those of the
Renaissance. Thus saying, it is worth mentioning that the influence
of Milton's 'Paradise Lost' is highly visible in his 'Hyperion'. At the
same breath, the classical influence on his poetry has also been a
subject of intense research by scholars.
Critics today say that what makes the poetry of Keats the most
distinguished among all romantic poets is the fact that his poetic
genius blossomed under the romantic breeze, and matured under
the sunshine of classicism. The genuine classicism of ancient
Greece, which shows the characteristic classical restraint, is very
much present in his poems. What more, it is harmoniously blended
with the romantic ardor of his poetry, which results in a wonderful
fusion of romantic impulse and classical severity. This statement
holds much truth when we take into account his more mature Odes,
where we notice Keats' sense of form, purity and orderliness. His
Odes have all the spontaneity and freedom of imagination that
characterize the poetry of the Romantic era. For example, when in
his 'Ode to a Nightingale', the poet describes the bird's song as the
voice of eternity and expresses intense longing to die in the hope of
merging with eternity, there is this romantic suggestiveness of
sensual delight of the poet in these lines:

"The same that oft-times hath/Charmed magic casements, opening

on the foam/Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn".
However, at once, the poet restrains himself with the lines:
"Forlorn! The very word is like a bell/To toll me back from thee to
my sole self"...which is a perfect example of romantic passion
fused with classical restraint. In all his mature Odes, including 'Ode
to a Nightingale', Ode on a Grecian Urn', 'Ode to Melancholy' and
'Ode to Psyche', he is said to have cast aside his over-loaded diction
of his earlier poems and come out with a romantic richness that is
replete with the Hellenic clarity characterizing Greek literature.
The poetic alienation and the theme of melancholy:
While beauty and mutability are said to be the recurrent themes in
Keats' mature Odes, critics have pointed out that he was somewhat
"obsessed by the close juxtaposition of joy and grief, delight and
pain". Some point out, that in his pursuit of beauty, he became an
escapist, ignoring the realities of life. In his earlier poems,
'Isabella', 'Lamia', The Eve of St. Agnes' and others, his imagination
certainly plays with the romance of love, with medieval elements,
cruel, mysterious ladies, 'a faery's child', the spell and enchantment
of the magical world. However, all this is characterized by his sense
of alienation as a creative thinker, which, assume a deeper tone
and meaning in his later works, i.e., his Odes. Throughout his
journey as a poet, he strived to harmonize what scholars today say
'the life of sensation with life of thought'. His earlier hankering for
unreflecting enjoyment of sensuous delights, as seen in his 'Sleep
and Poetry', is later replaced by a strong yearning to subject
himself persistently and unflinchingly, to the joy and beauty of life,
that is accompanied by the inevitable pain, hopelessness and
despair of life. Hence, the lines: "Joy whose hand is ever at his
lips/Bidding adieu". Keats knew that joy and beauty on this earth is
transient, and from this transience, the melancholy so very typical
of his poems originate. Melancholy, he says, "dwells with
beauty/Beauty that must die".
It is this triumph of the stoic acceptance of life over despair which
he attains through a deep spiritual experience, as he expresses in

his 'Ode on a Grecian Urn', "When old age shall this generation
waste/Thou shall remain in midst of other woe than ours'...
These lines can never come from the pen of an escapist. For me, he
was purely a thinker profoundly concerned with the mystery of life
which he deals as a poet, not as a political rebel or as a
philosopher. Scholastic researches strive to bring out new
perspectives of his poetry even today. As a reader, I would be
content exploring the romantic fervor and richness of imagery of
his poems for years to come!

Some useful resources that helped me write this article:

Muir,Kenneth (ed): John Keats: A Reassessment (Liverpool 1957)
Ridley, M.R.: The Craftsmanship of John Keats
G.M. Bowra: The Romantic Imagination
Middleton Murry: Studies in Keats
Dr. S. Sen: John Keats: Selected Poems with Odes, Hyperion, and
Fall of Hyperion