John Keats was one of the greatest of English Romantic poets. Neither was he concerned with a  doctrine like Shelley  nor did he try to discover moral lessons in nature like William Wordsworth. He was mainly the poet of Beauty and he held that our only point of contact with ultimate truth or reality of things lay in Beauty-beauty apprehended by imagination. He was endowed with a wonderful skill in choosing words  and expressions, and his poems are remarkable for their pictorial brilliance. 

            Of all the great poets of the early nineteenth Century, John Keats was the last born and the first to die. He was the son of Thomas Keats, a west country head ostler in a livery stable, and was born prematurely on the 31st of October, 1795 at Finsbury, London. His father died, when Keats was only 15. Apprenticed to a surgeon, he studied medicine, but soon gave it up to devote all his time to poetry. He was  21, but the remaining five years of his life produced a body of work that has established him as a major English Poet.

In this short span of his life, what ever he wrote, it was worth to weigh in gold. His major works include ‘Endymion’ (1818), ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ (1819), ‘The Sonnets’,  ‘The great odes to Autumn’, ‘Ode to Psyche’, ‘Ode on indolence’, ‘Ode to a Nightingale’,  ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ and ‘Ode on Melancholy’. His last volume included ‘Lamia’, ‘Isabella’, ‘The Eve of St. Agnes’ and other poems.

He contracted tuberculosis (TB) from his brother while nursing him and when his condition worsened, made a trip to the warmer climate of Italy. His falling health, his brothers death and dim hope of marrying Fanny Brawne did not provide even a ray of hope to him and he died on February 23, 1821. He was buried in the Protestant Cemetery in Rome.

            FOUR SEASONS

     Four Seasons is a sonnet in which Keats describes man’s response to beauty in the different stages of his life. The poet compares the man’s life with the four seasons of a year of his country. There are four seasons in a year- Spring (the season of growth), Summer (the season of exuberance), Autumn (the season of inactivity) and Winter (the season of decay). Similarly a man has childhood, Manhood, and the old age.

     The poet is very thoughtful about the human life. He first of all looks at span of time, taken to form a year. Then he mentions how a year has four different seasons. Now he compares these seasons with various mental stages of a man. First of all comes the period of childhood when his imagination is sharp. Then comes in youth when every idea and thought is brooded upon by him. Later on comes maturity at that times he checks his imagination and does not observe even the most beautiful fountain is flowing by his side. Finally comes the old age. In this age he is physically as well as mentally weak. He loses his beauty and brightness. His memory is dim and his eye-sight is fogy. Thus the poet compares the four human stages with four seasons of a year.

OUR SEASONS

John Keats

Four seasons fill the measure of the year;

There are four seasons in the mind of man;

He has his lusty Spring, when fancy clear

Takes in all beauty with an easy span;

He has his summer, when luxuriously

Spring’s honey’d cud of youthful thought he loves

To ruminate, and by such dreaming nigh

H’is nearest unto heaven: quiet coves

His soul has in its Autumn, when his wings

He furleth close; contented so to look

On mists in idleness-to let fair things

Pass by unheeded as a threshold brook:

He has his Winter too of pale misfeature,

Or else he would forgo his mortal nature.