A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:

A Thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness;

Endymion  Book 1  line 1-3

In John Keats poetry, we always easy to find fine phases and beautiful imagery. There are over 4000 lines in Endymion which I hardly go through all from Book 1 to Book 4. In my experience, it bore me to continue reading it cause it is too much luxurious description of the scenery. However, if I randomly pick up a few lines and read them slowly and more focus, in stead of boring, I find the description is beautiful and vivid, and my enjoyment increase. The imagery can keep in my mind for my meditation after. John Keats beautiful verses seem sprinkling inside his poetry and stimulate your appreciation for his art.

Then I read this book: Great Shakespearens-Lamb, Hazlitt, Keats  Vol 4 today and I understood the style and the characteristics of his poetry. Beth Lau, a professor of English at California State University, who wrote the part on Keats, gave me a very good explanation of my experience.

'From Keats's letters, marginalia and poems reveal a number of significant patterns in his response to Shakespeare. On such pattern is his tendency to focus on discrete, isolated passages, often with little regard for the larger context. ' Beth Lau commented. She also quoted John Keats letter to Reynolds to show John Keats focused on particular beautiful imagery and fine phases in Shakespeare's work as:

'I neer found so many beautis in the sonnets - they seem to be full of fine things said unintentionally - in the intensity of working out conceits.....' Keats letter continues, 'He [Shakespeare] overwhelms a genuine Lover of Poesy with all manner of abuse, talking about - "a poets rage/And stretched metre of an antique song" - Which by the by will be a capital Motto for my Poem [Endymion] - wont it? - He speaks too of "Time's antique pen" - and "Aprils first born flowers" and "deaths eternal cold" '

Beth also quoted John Keats's biography author Bate and his other critics like Jack Stillinger to show Keats's Shakespearen style as:

Bate: Keats reminds us of Shakespeare' in his use of vivid imagery that combines several senses.

Jack Stillinger: Keats is definitely " with Shakespeare" in the 'particularity and concreteness'' of his 'diction and imagery.....There is a striking quantity of things in Keats's poetry, things that can be visualized or that stimulate the auditory and other senses.

And Beth concluded: Virtually everyone who writes on Keats and Shakespeare agrees that the rich, sensuous imagery, the striking epithets and condensed language that characterizes Keats's best poetry are reminiscent of the same qualities in Shakespeare's verse and are likely to have been influenced or enhanced by the Romantic poet's in-depth study of his Presider's works.

The above passages I copied from Beth's essay on the Shakespearen Keats let me know more about Keats poetry and I enjoyed reading her critic on Keats.