Writing in the face of death - Keats

After watching "Bright Star" (see elliotswatching.blogspot.com), I was inspired to reread some Keats - got out my old great college keats text, from freshman year, still with my dorm room # inscribed, and with checkmarks beside the assigned poems and the key passages in the letters underlined - still useful info (except for the dorm room #)! It's obvious on even a casual re-reading that Keats is second only to Shakespeare in use of language. Every time I look at the great odes (last night I reread "Nightingale") I am stunned and moved and blown away by the beauty, line by line. His early death (at 25) is part of the pathos and the legend and also his great theme - all of his great poems are infused with his seeming foreknowledge that he would die young (and obscure). The fact that he did young but become posthumously famous makes these poems all the more stunning. How could his contemporaries not have universally recognized this greatness? In his day, it seems, a poet had to be independently wealthy (Byron) or manage to concoct a career through various scribbling assignments, translations and the like, and still live in poverty and uncertainty. It was the time before writing programs, endowed chairs, arts councils, and private grants (except for patronage). We can only wonder at what great works Keats would have produced had he survived - but then again, was it the nearness of death that made his works so great? Had he lived, would he have doddered into old age like Wordsworth? Every serious reader should look at Keats's odes again and again - I love them more each time I come back to them.