I have never taken the time to become a dedicated fan of Keats. He is unquestionably one of the greats of English literature, but to really understand and enjoy his poetry takes work, and there have always been more pressing interests. But Keats' sonnet about Leigh Hunt's two years in prison has always appealed to me because I learned as a young boy to do as Hunt did while incarcerated and escape my often-dreary surroundings by reading.

I have not spent a great deal of time in "Spenser's halls," but I have flown with "daring Milton" through the "fields of air" many times. And more importantly, I have spent many, many enjoyable hours "free as the sky-searching lark" while reading everything from The Sugar Creek Gang Digs for Treasure, as a lad in Clear Lake, Iowa's little Carnegie Library, to somewhat more challenging, but no less enjoyable works here in the Shenandoah Valley.

Leigh Hunt, by the way, was himself a formidable character in English literature. Indeed, it was in his radical weekly literary review, The Examiner, that both Shelley and Keats were introduced to the public. And it was his work on The Examiner that landed him and his brother John in prison for criticizing the Prince Regent (later George IV).

It was also Leigh Hunt who wrote what I believe is one of the most delightful short poems in the English language, "Jenny Kiss'd Me," after being surprised with a kiss from Thomas Carlyle's formidable wife Jane Welsh Carlyle when he showed up at the Carlyle residence one day after a prolonged illness. The poem goes as follows.

It was Hunt who had given Shelley the book of Keats' poems that was with him when he drowned off the coast of Spain in 1822 at the age of 30. And it was Hunt who delivered Shelley's heart to Mary Shelley after the larger-than-life adventurer, Edward (John) Trelawny, plucked it from the poet's body as it was being cremated on the beach. This heart is said to have been found after Mary Shelley's death wrapped in a copy of "Adonais," Shelley's elegy to Keats.

Keats' death preceded Shelley's by one year and fourth months. He was in Rome at the time, where he had gone in hopes of recovering from tuberculosis. He was 26. Unlike Shelley, who was an aristocrat, Keats was from a solidly middle class family. He studied to be a surgeon-apothecary, but most of his time was spent reading Virgil's Aeneid, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Ovid's Metamorphoses, and in the end, medicine could not compete with his desire to write poetry. In 1916, Keats published his first poem, and for the next five years he produced poetry that is as well known today, and some critics say as good as any of the works of the great bard himself, Shakespeare.