A Draught Of Sunshine

Hence Burgundy, Claret, and Port, Away with old Hock and madeira, Too earthly ye are for my sport; There's a beverage brighter and clearer. Instead of a piriful rummer, My wine overbrims a whole summer; My bowl is the sky, And I drink at my eye, Till I feel in the brain A Delphian pain Then follow, my Caius! then follow: On the green of the hill We will drink our fill Of golden sunshine, Till our brains intertwine With the glory and grace of Apollo! God of the Meridian, And of the East and West, To thee my soul is flown, And my body is earthward press'd. It is an awful mission, A terrible division; And leaves a gulph austere To be fill'd with worldly fear. Aye, when the soul is fled To high above our head, Affrighted do we gaze After its airy maze, As doth a mother wild, When her young infant child Is in an eagle's claws And is not this the cause Of madness? - God of Song,

Of snow upon the mountains and the moors-No--yet still stedfast, still unchangeable, Pillow'd upon my fair love's ripening breast, To feel for ever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever--or else swoon to death.

A Party Of Lovers
Pensive they sit, and roll their languid eyes, Nibble their toast, and cool their tea with sighs, Or else forget the purpose of the night, Forget their tea -- forget their appetite. See with cross'd arms they sit -- ah! happy crew, The fire is going out and no one rings For coals, and therefore no coals Betty brings. A fly is in the milk-pot -- must he die By a humane society? No, no; there Mr. Werter takes his spoon, Inserts it, dips the handle, and lo! soon The little straggler, sav'd from perils dark, Across the teaboard draws a long wet mark. Arise! take snuffers by the handle, There's a large cauliflower in each candle. A winding-sheet, ah me! I must away To No. 7, just beyond the circus gay. 'Alas, my friend! your coat sits very well; Where may your tailor live?' 'I may not tell. O pardon me -- I'm absent now and then. Where might my tailor live? I say again I cannot tell, let me no more be teaz'd -He lives in Wapping, might live where he pleas'd.'

Bright Star
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 moving waters at their priestlike task Of pure ablution round earth's human shores, Or gazing on the new soft-fallen mask

Biography
[edit]Early

life

John Keats was born on 31 October 1795 to Thomas and Frances Jennings Keats. Keats and his family seemed to have marked his birthday on 29 October, however baptism records give the birth date as the 31st.[3] He was the eldest of four surviving children; George (17971841), Thomas (17991818) and Frances Mary "Fanny" (1803 89). Another son was lost in infancy. John was born in central London although there is no clear evidence of the exact location.[4] His father first worked as a hostler[5] at the stables attached to the Swan and Hoop inn, an establishment he later managed and where the growing family lived for some years. Keats believed that he was born at the inn, a birthplace of humble origins, but there is no evidence to support this.[3] The Keats at the Globe pub now occupies the site, a few yards from modern day Moorgate station. He was baptised at St Botolph-without-Bishopsgate and sent to a local dame school as a child. His parents were unable to afford Eton or Harrow,[6][7] so in the summer of 1803 he was sent to board at John Clarke's school in Enfield, close to his grandparents' house. The small school had a liberal, progressive outlook and a progressive curriculum more modern than the larger, more prestigious schools.[8] In the family atmosphere at Clarke's, Keats developed an interest in classics and history which would stay with him throughout his short life. The headmaster's son, Charles Cowden Clarke, would become an important influence, mentor and friend, introducing Keats to Renaissance literature including Tasso, Spenser and Chapman's translations. Keats is described as a volatile character "always in extremes", given to indolence and fighting. However at 13 he began focusing his energy towards reading and study, winning his first academic prize in midsummer 1809.[8] In April 1804, when Keats was eight, his father died after fracturing his skull falling from his horse on a return visit to the school. Thomas died intestate. Frances remarried two months later, but left her new husband soon afterwards, and the four children went to live with their grandmother, Alice Jennings, in the village of Edmonton.[9] In March 1810, when Keats was 14, his mother died of tuberculosis leaving the children in the custody of their grandmother. She appointed two guardians, Richard Abbey and John Sandell, to take care of them. That autumn, Keats left Clarke's school to apprentice with Thomas Hammond, a surgeon and apothecary, neighbour and doctor of the Jennings family, and lodged in the attic above the surgery at 7 Church Street until 1813.[3]Cowden Clarke, who remained a close friend of Keats, described this as "the most placid time in Keats's life". [10]