John Keats

This is said to be one of John Keats' best poem:

Ode to Autumn
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Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness,
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,

For Summer has o'er-brimmed their clammy cell.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;
Or on a half-reaped furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.
Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,---
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir, the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft,
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Biography of John Keats
(1775 - 1821)

John Keats was born on October 31, 1775 in London. His parents were Frances Jennings and Thomas Keats. John Keats was educated at Enfield School, which was known for its liberal education. While at Enfield, Keats was encouraged by Charles Cowden Clarke in his reading and writing. After the death of his parents when he was fourteen, Keats became apprenticed to a surgeon. In 1815 he became a student at Guy's Hospital. However, after qualifying to become an apothecary-surgeon, Keats gave up the practice of Medicine to become a poet. Keats had begun writing as early as 1814 and his first volume of poetry was published in 1817. In 1818 Keats took a long walking tour in the British Isles that led to a prolonged sore throat, which was to become a first symptom of the disease that killed his mother and brother, tuberculosis. After he concluded his walking tour, Keats settled in Hampstead. Here he and Fanny Brawne met and fell in love. However, they were never able to marry because of his health and financial situation. Between the Fall of 1818 and 1820 Keats produces some of his best known works, such as La Belle Dame sans Merci and Lamia. After 1820 Keats' illness became so severe that he had to leave England for the warmer climate of Italy. In 1821 he died of tuberculosis in Rome. He is buried there in the Protestant cemetery. ..