“But this is human life: the war, the deeds, The disappointment, the anxiety, Imagination’s struggles, far and nigh,All human; bearing in themselves this good, That they are still the air, the subtle food, To make us feel existence. -Keats, EndymionThis is the ‘goal’ of the soul path – to feel existence; not to overcome life’s struggles and anxieties, but to know life first hand, to exist fully in context. (Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul, p.260)”

English poet

John Keats was an English poet of the Romantic period, born in 1795 and dead in 1821. He belongs to the second generation of Romantic poets, alongside Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and is known for verse that became central to English literature after his death. His poems were published for less than four years before he died of tuberculosis at 25. They were not well received during his lifetime, but his reputation rose quickly afterward. By the end of the nineteenth century he had entered the English canon, and his work went on to influence many writers of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood.