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Poet
John Keats
B. 1795 D. 1821
Keats was born in London in 1795. His father was killed in a riding accident when Keats was eight; his mother died six years later, probably from tuberculosis. The loss…
The Classics
Ode on Melancholy
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Ode on Melancholy - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
No, no, go not to Lethe, neither twist Wolf’s-bane, tight-rooted, for its poisonous wine Nor suffer thy pale forehead to be kiss’d By nightshade, ruby grape of Proserpine; Make not…
The Classics
Ode to a Nightingale
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Ode to a Nightingale - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains My sense, as though of hemlock I had drunk, Or emptied some dull opiate to the drains One minuute past, and Lethe-wards…
The Classics
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, Before high-pil’d books, in charactery, Hold like rich garners the full ripened…
The Classics
Bright Star
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Bright Star - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Bright star, would I were stedfast as thou art ? Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night And watching, with eternal lids apart, Like nature’s patient, sleepless Eremite, The…
The Classics
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer
Read by Simon Russell Beale
by John Keats
On First Looking Into Chapman’s Homer - John Keats - Read by Simon Russell Beale
Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold, And many goodly states and kingdoms seen; Round many western islands have I been Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold….
The Classics
Where be ye going, you Devon maid?
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
Where be ye going, you Devon maid? - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Where be ye going, you Devon maid? And what have ye there i’ the basket? Ye tight little fairy, just fresh from the dairy, Will ye give me some cream…
The Classics
To Autumn
Read by Andrew Motion
by John Keats
To Autumn - John Keats - Read by Andrew Motion
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run; To…
Poet
Michael Longley
B. 1939 D. 2025
…reimagined as Poseidon’s, as the god carves his way through sea. Critics have acknowledged his work’s mnemonic qualities; and, as with much of Edward Thomas, W.B. Yeats, and Keats from…
Poem
Prelude to a New Fin-de-Siècle - David Gascoyne
…with Keats and Shelley such things as That poets can ‘legislate’ and prophesy; Or like Stravinsky when he wrote ‘The Rite’ Become transmitting vessels for new sounds From an inspiring,…
Poet
Stanley Kunitz
B. 1905 D. 2006
…of his career, commenting in a late interview that “as a young poet I looked for what Keats called ‘a fine excess’, but as an old poet I look for…
Poet
Helen Dunmore
B. 1952 D. 2017
…how fine – It went down all pulpy, slushy, oozy, all its delicious enbonpoint melted down my throat like a large, beatified Strwberry. I shall certainly breed.” – John Keats…
Poet
Stephanie Norgate
B. 1957
…by John Keats “Poetry is the fox under our shirts that gnaws away at our hearts. Outside, we stand firm, inside, we are altered forever. ” – Charles Wright from…
Poem
A Discursive Poem About Poetry and Thought - C. K. Stead
…but it’s no longer an issue.’ Then the poems will come into their own. ‘Listen to us,’ they’ll say. ‘The odes of Keats the cantos of Ezra Pound Jim Baxter’s…
Poet
Penelope Shuttle
B. 1947
…most things in nature often does not have.” – Wallace Stevens “The ear of the writer is ‘open like a greedy shark’.” – John Keats “‘The mad instead’ of poetry.”…
Poet
Andrew Motion
B. 1952
…Award. He was knighted for his services to literature in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2009. That same year, his biography of John Keats became the basis for the Cannes Film…
Poem
John Keats in Winchester Say you had been for a walk by the river among fields of dry yellow and brown whose smell was baking, as if the earth were…
Poet
John Milton
B. 1608 D. 1674
…reputation mostly rested on his prose work. However, by the late eighteenth century he was recognised as a master, giving inspiration to, among many other poets, Blake, Wordsworth and Keats….