Endymion, and Other Poems

No sooner did Keats earn a certificate in medicine than would he abandon it for a life dedicated to poetry. His brief and difficult life of twenty five years brought such stimulating works as Endymion (1818), Hyperion (1819), which were inspired by the Illiad and Odyssey, and others Ode to a Nightingale (1819) and La Belle Dame sans Merci, which were inspired by love. Before his death to tuberculosis, he managed to write On Melancholy and On a Grecian Urn, leaving a distinct voice that is as influential today as it was on Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth in the 19th century.