The Eve of St. Agnes

John Keats: Selected Poems

by John KEATS (1795 - 1821)

John Keats is perhaps the most talented poet of the English Romantic Period. Although his life was cut short by disease at the age of 25, he produced some of the most famous poems in world literature. Less erudite and philosophical than Shelley and not so technically versatile as Byron, he displayed a sure poetic instinct and an amazing ability to appeal powerfully to the senses and to the emotions by the brilliance of his diction. Thus his poetry is noted more for exquisite feeling than for thought, but in his particular sphere he was unmatched. His influence upon later poets has been immense. (Introduction by Leonard Wilson)

Listen next episodes of John Keats: Selected Poems:
A Song About Myself , After Dark Vapours Have Oppressed Our Plains , Bright Star, would I were stedfast as thou art , Fill for Me a Brimming Bowl , Happy Is England , How Many Bards Gild the Lapses of Time! , Isabella: or The Pot of Basil , Keen, Fitful Gusts Are Whisp'ring Here and There , Lamia, part I , Lamia, part II , O Solitude! If I Must with Thee Dwell , Ode (Bards of Passion and of Mirth) , Ode on a Grecian Urn , Ode on Melancholy , Ode to a Nightingale , On Fame , On First Looking into Chapman's Homer , On the Grasshopper and Cricket , On the Sonnet , Stanzas (In a drear-nighted December) , The Day Is Gone, And All Its Sweets Are Gone , To Autumn , To Byron , To Fanny , To Hope , To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent , When I have fears , Where Be Ye Going, You Devon Maid?