Looking Deeper into John Keats 'Ode to A Nightingale'

At one point in John Keats' life as a romantic poet, all his disappointments started catching up with him. Keats contracted tuberculosis after finally finishing his hard work at medical school. He had contracted the fatal disease from his brother Tom, who died from it. Keats then fell in love with a young woman who would never return his love at all. During the late stages of his terrible illness, Keats' poetry becomes more morose, …

…Robyn V. Young. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., pp 283-284 Tate, Allen, "A Reading of Keats (II)," in The American Scholar, Vol. 15, Spring, 1996, pp 189-197. Rpt. in Poetry Criticism. Ed. Robyn V. Young. Vol. 1. Detroit: Gale Research Inc., pp 295 Vendler, Helen, in her The Odes of John Keats, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press, 1983, pp. 330. Rpt. in Nineteenth- Century Literature Criticism, Ed. Laurie Lanzen Harris and Emily B. Tennyson, Vol. 8, Detroit: Gale Research Inc., pp.386-392