This document compares the poetry of John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley. It discusses their differing views on poetry, nature, imagination, and central themes. Keats focused on beauty and sensory experiences of nature. He believed in the power of imagination to transcend reality. Shelley saw nature as a living being and used it as a symbol of freedom. He viewed poets as revolutionaries who use imagination to envision a better future. While both were Romantic poets who died young, Keats tended towards pessimism about life while Shelley maintained an optimistic attitude.

1. COMPARISON BETWEEN
KEATS AND SHELLEY
Manshi
M.A English
2nd sem

2. Perception on Poetry
Keats
◦ No formal theory of poetry
◦ His poetics were expressed in letters to family, friends
and Fanny Brawne
◦ Explained poetry in two points
◦ Romantics
» Expression of the poet’s self
» Poet submerges his senses and perception in the
experience of another entity or object and
empathetically convey its experience.
◦ Negative capability
» Described term as “when a man is capable of being in
uncertainties mysteries, doubts, without any irritable
reaching after fact and reason
P.B Shelley
◦ He defined poetry in his work “A Defense of Poetry”
as ‘an expression of the imagination’: and poetry is
connate with the origin of man
◦ claim that "poets are the unacknowledged legislators
of the world".

3. Attitude towards the Nature
Keats
◦ Keats described nature in two ways
◦ He tells us about the beauty of nature
◦ He tells us about the joy and relief nature can bring
◦ His love for nature is purely sensuous and he loves the
beautiful sights and scenes of nature for their own sake
◦ He doesn’t try to find any hidden meanings in the nature
and describes it as he sees it.
◦ He believed that “heard melodies are sweet but those
unheard are sweeter” i.e., beauty imagined in superior
beauty perceived, since the senses are more limited than
the imagination and its creative power.
◦ “The poetry of the earth is never dead.” (On the
Grasshopper and Cricket )
P.B Shelley
◦ He believed that nature was a living being as a man and
that is endowed with soul
◦ Pantheism vision
◦ Articulate an aesthetic philosophy through metaphors of
nature
◦ most characteristic images are of sky and weather, of
lights and fires.
For instance :-
“Wild spirit, which art moving everywhere;
Destroyer and Preserver; hear ‘O’ hear”
- Ode to west wind

4. The Role of Imagination
Keats
◦ Believes in supreme value of imagination
◦ The imagination of Keats is the fruit of two main form:
◦ the world of his poetry is predominantly artificial
◦ Keats’s poetry stems from imagination in the sense
that a great deal of his work is a vision of what he
would like human life to be like, stimulated by his
own experience of pain and misery.
◦ Used imagination as a medium to escape from reality
into the past of Greek Mythology
◦ “The truth of Imagination– What the imagination seizes
as Beauty must be truth” ( in his letter to Benjamin Bailey
)
◦ “Whatever the imagination seizes as Beauty must be
truth -whether it existed before or not”
P.B Shelley
◦ Defended poetry as the expression of imagination
and understood as revolutionary creativity
◦ Shelley’s reality shows itself to be stronger than the
ideal and desire, and his world refuses to change
◦ Acc. To him, Poets is bound to suffer and isolates
himself from the rest of the world, projecting himself
into a better future.
◦ “Fear not for the future, weep not for the past”

5. Central theme
Keats
◦ Also known as ‘A lover of beauty’
◦ Contemplation of beauty is the central theme of Keats's
poetry.
For instance:-
◦ “Beauty is truth, truth beauty- that is all” (Ode on a
Grecian Urn)
◦ “A thing of beauty is a joy forever” (Endymion)
◦ “With a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every
other consideration, or rather obliterates another
consideration.” (his letters to George and Tom)
P.B Shelley
◦ Victorian called Shelley as Poet of ideal love.
◦ The pursuit of ideal love
◦ The rebellion against authority
◦ The untamed spirit ever in search of freedom
◦ Atheism
◦ Idealism
For instance:-
◦ “That Beauty in which all things work and move”
(Adonais)
◦ Poets' food is love and fame.(An Exhortation)

6. Cockney School of Poets
◦ Dismissive name for London- based Romantic poets such as Leigh Hunt, William Hazlitt, John Keats and P.B Shelley.
◦ Its primary target was Leigh Hunt
◦ Term was first used in a scathing review in Blackwood’s Magazine in October 1817, in which John Gibson Lockhart
mocked the poet’s lack of pedigree and sophistication.
◦ The article was published under a collective pseudonym but was mainly written by Lockhart.
◦ Lockhart criticised both Hunt and Keats and praised Shelley for his work and views.
◦ “His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess; he is merely a young Cockney rhymester,
dreaming a phantastic dream at the full of the moon.” (about Keats)
◦ Lockhart’s views on Shelley: "the base opinion of the sect have not as yet been able entirely to obscure in (Shelley) the
character, or take away from him the privileges of the genius born within him."
◦ He also commented that Shelley's political beliefs are far more radical than Hunt's.

7. Conclusion
◦ Keats and Shelley both famous poets from the late Romantic Period both lived short lives, dying young. Shelley at
age 29 from a boating accident and Keats at 25 from the horrible illness described as Consumption. The two poets
shared a passion for life, Keats for enjoying and celebrating it, and Shelley seeking to perfect the human condition.
◦ But there is a lot of difference between their perspective towards poetry, their attitude towards nature, the role of
imagination and the central themes in their poetry.
◦ Keats used much simpler language in his poetry than that of Shelley.
◦ We can see a pessimistic attitude in Keats poetry because of realization of his own health and consciousness. Keats
knows that he is not going to live for a longer period of time. So, that sadness and pessimism was somehow reflected
in his poems. On the other hand, Shelley had optimistic attitude and always hopes for a better future.
“We’re all the same, yet we’re all very different”

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