JOHN KEATS was an English Romantic poet.

He was one of the main figures of the

second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley
despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death.The
poetry of Keats is characterised by sensual imagery most notably in the series of odes.
Today his poems and letters are some of the most popular and most analysed in English
literature.

Every poet is a lover of beauty,but beauty for them may have different
meanings.Shakespeare was interested in the drama of human life while Milton’s
dominant interest was religion. But,beauty for Keats was his religion.His poems reflect
his ardent fervor for all that is beautiful irrespective of whether that beauty belongs to
art,nature or woman. beauty is one of the major hallmarks of his poetry. This becomes
abundantly clear when Keats says that:

A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

In the process of exhibiting his love for beauty,Keats lends a touch of sensuousness to his
poetry. the ODE ON A GRECIAN URN sufficiently bears the stamp of Keats
sensuousness. We see Gods in a “mad-pursuit” after the maidens. Then we see the:

Bold lover,never,never cans’t thou kiss,

Though winning near the goal.

Keats makes us feel the zest and beauty of love in the following lines:

For ever warm and still to be enjoy’d,

For ever panting, and for ever young;

Keats expands his sensuousness from pictures of physical love to the pictures of natural
beauties.this can be exemplified best from his ODE TO NIGHTINGALE which is like a
panorama of flowers giving sweet fragrance to our breath:

The grass,the thicket,and the fruit-tree wild:

White hawthorn,and the pastoral eglantine
Fast fading violets covered up in leaves;
And mid-May’s eldest child,

Similarly,ODE TO AUTUMN is replete with sensual imagery.The autumn conspiring

with the sun gives an idea of intimacy between two lovers:

Close bosom-friend of the maturing Sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

Thus,we have discussed at length the sensuous element in Keats poetry but sensuousness
alone fails to confine his poetic abilities.After indulging in sensuousness,he rises above it
and proves his spiritual and intellectual caliber.This can be pointed out in his ODE TO A
NIGHTINGALE which is not merely a song of nightingale ,though it would have been if
he wrote it early in his career but he had passed beyond that stage.The song is a symbol
of universal beauty which is eternal:

Thou was not born for death,immortal bird!

Keats would die,that nightingale would die but the song of the nightingale i.e.the beauty
that the song represents would continue forever.The poet in a sudden sweep of his
imagination has passed from the world of senses to the world of eternity,where the
nightingale would sing forever.Beauty transcends time and space.Keats first tells us of the
beauty that is seen by the eyes.Then imagination reveals to the poet,the beauty which is
beyond the senses as depicted by the lines in ODE ON A GRECIAN URN:

Heard melodies are sweet,but those unheard

Are sweeter;
So imagination reveals a new aspect of beauty,which is‘sweeter’than beauty which is
perceptible to senses.Senses only perceive external aspect of beauty but imagination
apprehends its essence.

Keats saw that life is full of sufferings and he himself was a prey to disease and
pain.Where is then, beauty in life?He takes up this question in his ODE ON
MELANCHOLY.He finds melancholy even in the sweetest things of life;even when a
man loves most fondly,when he bursts “joy’s grape against his palate fine”,veiled
melancholy comes and disillusions him.Melancholy dwells with Beauty.Pain and
suffering are not to be divorced from joy for they together make up life just like days and
night together make up time.To quote MIDDLETON MURRY:

“It involves a profound acceptance of life as it is-a

passing beyond all rebellion,not into the apathy of
stoic resignation,but into a condition of soul,to which
the sum of things foul or fair,high or low,rich or
poor-is revealed as necessary and true and beautiful.”

The underlying principle of all Keats's poetic thought is this :

"Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty,-that is all

Ye know on earth,and all ye need to know.”

In one of his letters he says : "I have loved the principle of beauty in all things". But his
"passion for the beautiful" was not that of the sensuous or sentimental man, it was an
intellectual and spiritual passion.