It’s the birthday of the great lyric poet who wrote:

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all

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

(To which math and science reply, “Preach.” See an interesting article on this here.)

John Keats (1795-1821) was born in London, the oldest of four. His father ran a city stable, and things were good until he was injured in a horse accident and died when Keats was only eight. Keats’ mother remarried disastrously, and the children lived with their maternal grandmother; his mother then died when Keats was 14. The grandmother had money but appointed a trustee, Richard Abbey, to deal with the finances, and he was a deceitful skinflint who made their lives difficult.

Keats left school to study with an apothecary-surgeon—his duties included setting bones and assisting with surgeries—and he became a licensed apothecary but never practiced because he wanted to be a poet. (Always a fun conversation with Mom and Dad, but of course they were gone.) His first important poem was a sonnet, “On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer” (1816), published by the editor Leigh Hunt, who introduced him to literary types like William Wordsworth and Percy Bysshe Shelley. Keats’ first book of poetry, cleverly entitled Poems, came out in 1817, and Endymion, a long poem written in loose rhymed couplets, came out in 1818. The poem is all about a shepherd’s love affair with the Greek moon goddess and received harsh criticism.

In 1818, Keats embarked on his famous walking tour of the Lake District and Scotland, and soon after experienced the onset of tuberculosis. He returned to London to nurse his brother, Tom, who himself was dying of tuberculosis. (Fun fact: Keats’ other brother, George, immigrated to America at about this time and became a successful miller in Louisville, Kentucky. Which is not nearly as romantic as staying in England and dying of tuberculosis.) Keats also fell in love with Fanny Brawne, and though they got engaged, they were never able to marry due to Keats’ poor health and financial circumstances and the fact that Romantic poets are nearly always miserable. He published his final and greatest book of poetry in 1820, Lamia, Isabella, The Eve of St. Agnes, and Other Poems; it contains his most famous poems, “Ode on a Grecian Urn,” “Ode on Melancholy,” and “Ode to a Nightingale,” as well as the unfinished work, “Hyperion.” By now seriously ill, Keats went to Rome seeking a warmer climate and died there at the age of 25.

For crying out loud bundle up on this cool damp Wednesday, have a happy All Hallows’ Eve, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.