John Keats - A Tribute in Verse

Keats. The name is synonymous with great romantic poetry and great romantic poets. A short life but a legacy of works that few, if any, can rival.

And of course his end was to be tragically romantic. Keats was returning one night to his home in Hampstead when he coughed. He coughed a single drop of blue blood upon his hand and said ‘I know the colour of that blood, it is arterial blood, it is my death warrant, I must die’.

And so it was that tuberculosis took its slow, devastating hold. He moved to Rome hoping the warmer climate would help but died, at age 25, in the Eternal City in 1821.

His death robbed the world of its young and beautifully talented wordsmith. Such was the esteem among his fellow poets that so many wrote of the joy of his works and the grief of his death.

This is their tribute.