The Complete Poems

"I would sooner fail than not be among the greatest." - Within three years of writing these words John Keats died at the age of just 25. His poetry is among the most seductive in English literature and many of his couplets – "Beauty is truth, truth beauty – that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know" – continue to enchant and tantalise readers to this day.
Most of Keats' major poems date from an extraordinary burst of creativity in 1819, and they are all included in this collection: The Eve of St. Agnes, La Belle Dame sans Merci, The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream, Lamia, and the famous lyrics, Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn and To Autumn.
The intensity of his feelings for nature, art, mortality and love, and the way they emerged from the briefest of lives, has made Keats a leading figure of the Romantic movement.
Introduced by Andrew Motion: as Andrew Motion, the Poet Laureate, writes in a new introduction: The courage and cleverness of Keats in developing these ideas is deeply impressive. The capture of them in poems is not much short of miraculous.
John Keats (1795–1821) was born in Moorfields, London. His first volume of poems appeared in 1817. Typeset in Baskerville at the Folio society. Printed on St Pauls Wove paper.