A Joy Forever

The dreamy fellow above is one John Keats, born this day 1795, in London Town, Merry Olde England. Keats has a rather rough childhood, his father died in an accident when Keats was nine year old, and his mother died when Keats was fifteen. An orphan packed off to live with a grandmother by the age of 15, what a lovely beginning to life. That grandmother appointed Keats a guardian who decided to make Keats an apprentice to an apothecary. He eventually got a job at a hospital in London, but was really more interested in the study of literature. Little did he know at the time that he would soon be the object of studies in literature by precious school boys like myself long after his death. He managed to get his first poem published in May, 1816, and a career as a poet was launched. It was sadly to be an all too brief career. Keats became the guardian of his younger brother Tom after the death of their grandmother. Tom soon became ill with tuberculosis, and died in 1818. Even before his brother's death, Keats himself had also shown signs of the same illness. By 1820, he was showing serious signs of tuberculosis, and moved to Rome on the advice of his physician. The "care" of this physician was quite possibly one of the causes of Keats' early demise. Keats was put on a starvation diet of one piece of bread and an anchovy a day because his doctor thought he had a disease of the stomach. By the time it was sorted out that Keats had consumption the writing was on the wall. The end came early in 1821, and Keats was buried in Rome under a tombstone that contains the words he wanted on his tombstone "here lies one whose name was writ in water." Shelly was convinced that Keats' death was hastened by a scathing review of Keats' poem Endymion, but I am pretty sure that his "doctor" had much more to do with the sad demise of a truly great poet. But, for all those romantic poems that helped a clown like me (who just happens to have a great memory) recite to all those doe eyed girls, and making me look like the true romantic I am, and for showing us that a "A Thing of Beauty is a Joy Forever." John Keats (October 31st 1795- February 23rd, 1821, at the age of 25 from tuberculosis), you are my hero of the day.