In the few short years of his life John Keats created lasting images of beauty. He wrote with a firm touch, with rich yet controlled imagination, with a joyous delight in nature. He possessed an instant alchemy by which he transmuted all sights and sounds into poetry. Voracious reading set him standards rather than furnished him models, and he strove to perfect his poetry through constant creative revision. He pleaded for freedom of imagination as...

Most of Shelley's poetry reveals his philosophy, a combination of belief in the power of human love and reason, and faith in the perfectibility and ultimate progress of man. His lyric poems are superb in their beauty, grandeur and mastery of language.