The life of Keats was short, and it had no great adventures in it.  He lived much now with his two brothers until the elder, George, married and emigrated to America, and the younger, Tom, who had always been an invalid, died.  He went on excursions too, with his friends or by himself to country or seaside places, or sometimes he would spend days and nights in the hospitable homes of his friends.  And all the time he wrote letters which reveal to us his steadfast, true self, and poems which show how he climbed the steps of fame.

Undismayed at the ill success of his first book, the next year he published his long poem Endymion.

Endymion was a fabled Grecian youth whose beauty was so great that Selene, the cold moon, loved him.  He fell asleep upon the hill of Latmus, and while he slept Selene came to him and kissed him.  Out of this simple story Keats made a long poem of four books or parts.  Into it he wove many other stories, his imagination leading him through strange and wondrous scenery.  The poem is not perfect—­it is rambling and disconnected—­the story of Endymion being but the finest thread to hold a string of beads and priceless pearls together.

The first book is merely a long introduction, but it opens with unforgettable lines—­

“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever;
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

Then the poet tells us what are the things of beauty of which he thinks.

            “Such the sun, the moon,
    Trees old, and young, sprouting a shady boon
    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
    With the green world they live in; and clear rills
    That for themselves a cooling covert make
    ’Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
    Rich with a sprinkling of fair must-rose blooms;
    And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
    We have imagined for the mighty dead;
    All lovely tales that we have heard or read;
    An endless fountain of immortal drink
    Pouring unto us from the heaven’s brink.”

But although throughout the long poem there are lovely passages, and one or two most beautiful lyrics, the critics of the day saw only the faults of which Endymion is full, and the poem was received with a storm of abuse.

Soon after Keats published this poem, he, with a friend, set out on a walking tour to the Lake Country and to Scotland.  This was Keats’s first sight of real mountains, and he gloried in the grand scenery, but said “human nature is finer.”  When Keats set out there was not a sign of the invalid about him.  He walked twenty or thirty miles a day and cheerfully bore the discomforts of travel.  But the tour proved too much for his strength.  He caught a bad cold and sore throat, and was ordered home by the doctor.  He went by boat, arriving brown, shabby, and almost shoeless, among his London friends.