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One of the most distinctive periods in poetry occurred in England early in the 1800s. This is now referred to as the age of romanticism, a movement which rebelled against the neoclassical forms and celebrated the imagination as a spiritual force. John Keats was a prominent shaper of this new movement, and as such, he was not without his critics.

I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death, he soberly prophesied. Indeed, Keats suffered an early tragic death of tuberculosis at the age of twenty-five but today is recognized as the archetypal romantic genius who explored the limits of the imagination and celebrated the pleasures of the senses.

Unlike Shelley, Keats was not a political poet; his prime passion was for art. His muse was the goddess of beauty and truth, and his worship of her found its finest expression in his immortal odes, which stand unique in literature, unexcelled in perfection.

The poems collected here are: 1. Oh Chatterton How Very Sad Thy Fate 2. O Solitude If I Must with Thee Dwell 3. To One Who Has Been Long in City Pent 4. On First Looking into Chapman's Homer 5. To My Brothers 6. Great Spirits Now on Earth Are Sojourning 7. On the Grasshopper and Cricket 8. After Dark Vapours Have Oppressed Our Plains 9. On Seeing the Elgin Marbles 10. On the Sea 11. A Selection from Endymion 12. To Mrs. Reynolds' Cat 13. On Sitting Down to Read King Lear Once Again 14. When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be 15. Lines on the Mermaid Tavern 16. O Thou Whose Face Hath Felt the Winter's Wind 17. For There's Bishop's Teign 18. On Visiting the Tomb of Burns 19. Old Meg She Was a Gipsey 20. This Mortal Body of a Thousand Days 21. There Is a Joy in Footing Slow across a Silent Plain 22. The Eve of St. Mark 23. Why Did I Laugh Tonight? No Voice Will Tell 24. Bright Star, Would I Were Stedfast as Thou Art 25. Hyperion: A Fragment (Book I), II, and III) 26. Hyperion: A Fragment (Book I, continued; Book II, Book III) 27. La Belle Dame sans Merci: A Ballad 28. Sonnet to Sleep 29. Ode to Psyche 30. Ode to a Nightingale 31. Ode on a Grecian Urn 32. Ode on Melancholy 33. Ode on Indolence 34. Lamia (Part I) 35. Lamia (Part I, continued; Part II) 36. To Autumn 37. The Fall of Hyperion: A Dream 38. This Living Hand, Now Warm and Capable

John Keats (1795-1821) was an English romantic poet. Along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley, he was one of the key figures in the second generation of the romantic movement, despite the fact that his work had been in publication for only four years before his death. During his life, his poems were not generally well received by critics; however, after his death, his reputation grew to the extent that by the end of the nineteenth century he had become one of the most beloved of all English poets. He has had a significant influence on a diverse range of later poets and writers. His poetry is characterized by sensual imagery, most notably in the series of odes. Today his poems and letters are some of the most popularly read and analyzed.

Frederick Davidson (1932-2005), also known as David Case, was one of the most prolific readers in the audiobook industry, recording more than eight hundred audiobooks in his lifetime, including over two hundred for Blackstone Audio. Born in London, he trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and performed for many years in radio plays for the British Broadcasting Company before coming to America in 1976. He received AudioFile's Golden Voice Award and numerous Earphones Awards and was nominated for a Grammy for his readings.