Keats could be a bit of a blitherer, but he was an astonishingly sensual poet when he got the right subject in his teeth. It's this quality, I think, that keeps the melodrama of "The Eve of St. Agnes" from descending to futile purple. I greatly prize the so-called great odes, especially "To Autumn," more for the sound- and sensory-craft than for their content. He's the poet who taught me, even more than Spenser, that a sensually crafted line affects the sense of the verse.

When he's off, tho', his poems are, well, just overwritten. His advice (to the older Shelley no less) of loading every rift of poetry with ore is bad, and it shows in his lesser works.

---L.