It is tempting to look at a poem like John Keats' "On Seeing The Elgin Marbles" and classify it with his numerous other poems that dwell on growing old and dying. "On Seeing the Elgin Marbles" certainly can be read as a poem that is primarily preoccupied with the idea of mo...

Born in 1795, Keats, the son of a stablekeeper, was raised in Moorfields, London, and attended the Clarke School in Enfield. The death of his mother in 1810 left Keats and his three younger siblings in the care of a guardian, Richard Abbey. Although Keats was apprenticed to an apothecary, he soon ...