ENGLISH LITERATURE (CBSE/UGC NET)

Detailed explanation-1: -This grave contains the mortal remains of John Keats, a young English poet who died at Rome Feb. 20 1820 [sic-again an incorrect date] aged 25 years. This short life was so imbittered [sic] by discouragement & sickness that he desired these words to mark his grave: ‘Here lies one whose name is writ in water.

Detailed explanation-2: -“Here lies one whose name was writ in water, ” is the bitter description, etched at Keats’s dying request, the final sentiment from a poet who believed his words would fade into oblivion. When Keats died from tuberculosis aged 25, on 23 February 1821, the furniture in his room – now a museum – was burned.

Detailed explanation-3: -Friends of Keats who were responsible for the epitaph, are principally Charles Armitage Brown (3) and Joseph Severn (4).

Detailed explanation-4: -John Keats wrote sonnets, odes, and epics. All his greatest poetry was written in a single year, 1819: “Lamia, ” “The Eve of St. Agnes, ” the great odes (“On Indolence, ” “On a Grecian Urn, ” “To Psyche, ” “To a Nightingale, ” “On Melancholy, ” and “To Autumn”), and the two unfinished versions of an epic on Hyperion.

Detailed explanation-5: -“His name was written in water” means that he was immediately forgotten; he came and went and didn’t do anything anyone thought worth remembering.