Over the course of his short life, John Keats (1795-1821) honed a raw talent into a brilliant poetic maturity. By the end of his brief career, he had written poems of such beauty, imagination and generosity of spirit, that he had - unwittingly - fulfilled his wish that he should be among the English poets after my death . This wide-ranging selection of Keats s poetry contains youthful verse, such as his earliest known poem Imitation of Spenser ; poems from his celebrated collection of 1820 - including Lamia , Isabella , The Eve of St Agnes , Ode to a Nightingale and Hyperion - and later celebrated works such as La Belle Dame sans Merci . Also included are many poems considered by Keats to be lesser work, but which illustrate his more earthy, playful side and superb ear for everyday language.