My Favorite Poet POTD

From among the poets who fired my imagination whom shall I choose, can’t bring myself to pick and place from dozens, just one above all the rest! With all romantics in line, the one who has touched my heart chords most, is none other than John Keats In my eyes, he wears the mantle of a great poet for the sheer beauty of his diction and the images woven in the loom of his exorbitant fancy, tumbling one on another! Sad the scythe of Fate cut him down at the age of 25! Had he survived the autumnal blasts and seen the beauty of lovesome springs and sunny summers unfolding none could have been commensurable to him in name or fame When seasons change and summer loosens its fiery grip, who cannot but welcome Keats’ Autumn, the ‘Season of mist and mellow fruitfulness? When I hear a lone bird singing in the far fringes of the woodlands I strain my neck to see if it’s Keats’ Nightingale staying unseen and ‘pouring forth its soul in such ecstasy’ Ode on a Grecian Urn lifted him to stellar fame who saw, in the rustic scene painted on the Urn, life in its fullness, but’ frozen in time’ where he identified beauty and truth as one ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’- his immortal line keeps resounding and its echoes rippling in hearts many Sad, like a rose whose petals were knocked down from its stalk by the mighty wind’s powerful breath, he fell, but stays deathless among the dead emanating sweet fragrance in the surrounding air and his ‘plaintive anthem’ never ‘fades’, Jan.16.2023 ~ Placed tenth~ Beloved Poets Poetry Contest Sponsor- Regina McIntosh