Writ in eternity

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.

ON February 23, 1821, John Keats lay dying in a small room on the Spanish Steps in Rome, his body ravaged by tuberculosis, his soul burdened by the bitter knowledge that his genius remained unfulfilled. He had requested that his tomb bear no name-only the haunting epitaph, 'Here lies One Whose Name was writ in Water'. The poet of fleeting beauty had met the very end he had so often contemplated, an end he had both dreaded and accepted with wistful resignation.

Born in 1795 to a family of modest means, Keats was orphaned young and trained as a surgeon before surrendering to poetry. This choice brought suffering but also artistic immortality. Though dismissed by critics as an unworthy upstart, he reshaped English verse with his six years of poetic churning, leaving behind a body of work that endures as one of the greatest in the language.

Keats' poetry is an alchemy of sensuality and philosophy, fusing classical influences, medieval romance and profound melancholy.

His odes — Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and To Autumn — express a longing for permanence in a world of inevitable decay. His imagery, vivid and immersive, drips with colour, taste and sound: "Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness," he wrote in To Autumn, distilling the essence of an entire world into a single evocative line.

His notion of 'negative capability' — the ability to embrace uncertainty and mystery without seeking resolution — became central to his poetic philosophy.

Lovneet Bhatt