John Keats and other writers . . .

Standing on others' shoulders

Keats takes a break . . . The poet John Keats took a break from his medical studies, hopped a cab to the countryside, flopped himself down, and let go:

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

Keats was 21 years old, responsible for three younger siblings, and acutely sensitive to the beauties of nature and the richness of literature.

"O! How I love on a fair summer's eve . . . to take a sweet reprieve from little cares" to find a quiet place to read Milton and Sidney, "full often dropping a delicious tear,/ When some melodious sorrow spells mine eyes."

He found respite in reading and from it returned healthier.

One pants leg at a time . . . His work was shown by publisher Leigh Hunt at a dinner party to the poet Shelley, the essayist Hazlitt, and two other lights on Feb. 16, 1817. Keats was 22.

On Dec. 28, 1817, he attended an "immortal dinner" with the essayist Charles Lamb, the poet Wordsworth, and others.

On the following June 24, he began a walking tour of Scotland and the Lake District after seeing his brother and his bride off to America from Liverpool. He broke off the tour on Aug. 18, suffering a severe chill and sore throat. He found his other brother very sick and set to nursing him, writing poetry the while.

Meanwhile, his published work came under sharp attack, specifically his "Endymion," beginning memorably,

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

Its loveliness increases; it will never

Pass into nothingness; but still will keep

A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.

His sick brother died of TB on Dec. 1. Money troubles followed in 1819, but he reached an "understanding" with Fanny Brawne in September. She moved next door with her mother. They were engaged on Dec. 22, 1819. He came down with TB in a few months, offered to break the engagement. She refused. He kept writing, confined to his house during February of 1820.

Dead poet . . . Months earlier, thrashing about to solve money problems, he had considered shipping out as a surgeon but didn't. He did ask a friend to pay back a loan, meanwhile working on three major efforts. On Sept. 19, 1819, he had written the immortal "To Autumn," with its opener, "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,/ Close bosom friend of the maturing sun."

But by February of 1821, he was off to Italy for his health, invited by Shelley to stay with him. He died in Rome, not yet 26, of TB on Feb. 23, 1821, was buried in the Protestant Cemetery there.

Holy spirit! . . . Keats had written two poems (in succession) to his brother George while on vacation after passing his Apothecaries' Hall examination before he reached 21, the legal age to practice apothecary. One of the two began "Full many a dreary hour I have passed." Trying to write poetry.

He described the poet's life and influence on the world. "What tho I leave this dull, and earthly mold,/ Yet shall my spirit lofty converse hold/ With after [later] times," says the poet facing death. The spirit lives, in this poet's work.

Making your mark . . . One of those with his spirit held converse was F. Scott Fitzgerald, who relied on Keats' "La Belle Dame Sans Merci" . . .

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

Alone and palely loitering?

The sedge has withered from the lake,

And no birds sing.

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,

So haggard and so woe-begone?

when he wrote Tender Is the Night, about “a used-up man.”

Keats relied heavily on the 16th-century poet Spenser, author of "The Faerie Queene," portraying 12 knights, each standing for a virtue, each in service of Her Majesty. Down the long chain of inspiration we go, beneficiaries of their reliance on each other.

Not of their self-reliance, celebrated by our Emerson, but of their realization that no man is an island, per the English Donne, whose "Ask not for whom the bell tolls" inspired our Hemingway, as not enough Oak Park school kids know. The centuries have their legacy.