“My love has made me selfish. I cannot exist without you – I am forgetful of everything but seeing you again – my Life seems to stop there – I see no further. You have absorb’d me. I have a sensation at the present moment as though I was dissolving – I should be exquisitely miserable without the hope of soon seeing you … I have been astonished that Men could die Martyrs for religion – I have shudder’d at it – I shudder no more – I could be martyr’d for my Religion – Love is my religion – I could die for that – I could die for you.”

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.