John Keats the Romantic Poet
... him from school; he was then apprenticed to a surgeon. In 1814 John left his master after a quarrel, he then became a hospital student in London. While in London he was befriended by Cowden Clarke. Under his guidance he greatly devoted himself to literature. Keats, beginning to see his talent for writing finally gave up his medical career to pursue a literary life in 1814.2 When John Keats went public with his first literary works he was approached by Leigh Hunt. Hunt, seeing his potential, helped him publish his first poem in a magazine in May of 1816. One year later Keats published nearly thirty poems and sonnets.5 Keats then traveled to the Isle of Wight in spring of 1817. Feeling a lack of education, John along with Benjamin Bailey, a newly made friend, attended Oxford in the late summer. During his time at Oxford Keats worked on his poem entitled “Endymion”. Perhaps one of the most truth invoking poems ever written by Keats is the poem entitled “On Death”.3 Can death be sleep, when life is but a dream, And scenes of bliss pass as a phantom by? The transient pleasures as a vision seem, And yet we think the greatest pain's to die. How strange it is that man on earth should roam, And lead a life of woe, but not forsake His rugged path; nor dare he view alone His future doom which is but to awa...