Tis "the witching time of night", / Orbed is the moon and bright, / And the stars they glisten, glisten, / Seeming with bright eyes to listen —
Happy Halloween! And happy birthday, John Keats! The English Romantic poet (born October 31, 1795) was playing on a line from Shakespeare’s Hamlet in this poem that starts out plenty spooky. Though he had little formal education, Keats was a voracious reader, and he sprinkled his writing with passionate, sensual imagery. His odes are among his finest achievement (Ode to a Nightingale, Ode on a Grecian Urn, To Autumn), which were written just two years before his death from tuberculosis at age 25. A tragic tale indeed.
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