"Poetry, he argued, made life permanent"

Though Keats’ career was cut short by untimely death, his legacy as one of the most revered Romantics lives on. Poet David Biespiel explains why Keats, though reviled by some during his life, remains the much-adored poster boy for The Romantic Poets. Keats was a poetry purist, and even to modern minds, his lofty ideals and romantic notions are irresistible.

From the Oregonian:

Keats lived a pauper's existence. But his poems represent a golden poetic ideal—namely, that the subject of poetry is poetry itself (even at his best, Keats is a horribly self-conscious poet). He believed that poetry could release you from the stream of time through a delirium of the senses, with vividness and sensuality the route to authentic emotion. Poetry, he wrote in a letter, must "surprise by a fine excess" (if you know John Milton, you can see why Keats adored that epic poet for his exquisite sense of passion and pleasure).

Where nature for Wordsworth is an obvious source for poetic material, its use as poetic material for Keats was limited to nature's explicit connection to art. Keats believed that a poem must strive for the infinite and that there is a real world of mortality and an ideal world of permanence. Poetry, he argued, made life permanent.