Already with thee! tender is the night And haply the Queen-Moon is on her throne
Cluster'd around by all her starry Fays But here there is no light Save what from heaven
is with the breezes blown Through verdurous glooms and winding mossy ways. Despite his
tragically short life John Keats a self-confessed "rebel Angel" endures for many as a
personification of the Romantic age. While contemporary critics mocked him as a "Cockney poet"
and an uneducated lower-class "apothecary" who aspired to poetry subsequent generations began
to see and appreciate both the rich and impassioned sensuousness and the love of beauty and
liberty that pervade his work. From Endymion and Hyperion to 'The Eve of St Agnes' 'La Belle
Dame sans Merci' and the Odes this collection which presents Keats's oeuvre in chronological
order displays his rapid poetic growth the development of his philosophical and spiritual
beliefs and the voluptuous silken nature of his verse.
