The Poems of John Keats is a collection of Keats' poetry, remarkable in its demonstration of Keats' development as a poet. The ones belonging to his first volume of poetry (1817) lack organization and complexity, but, in their painful honesty, hint at the genius that was even then being honed. By the time he wrote Endymion and his famous odes, in 1819, Keats had been transformed. His later work is more complex, the language is rich and sensual, the themes he explores have their root in human consciousness.

Keats died when he was twenty-six, but as this collection of poetry shows, he had already written some of the most perfect lyrical poetry in the English language. Through the veins of each of the poems runs a single consciousness that is preoccupied by the nature of beauty, the transience of time and the immortality of art. That consciousness could belong only to Keats.