Of Poets, Dreamers, and Doctors: Keats as a ‘Physician to All Men’

ABSTRACT This essay explores some aspects of the complex relationship between prophecies, poems, and dreams in Keats’s poetry. Keats often refers to the idea that poetry can alleviate the harsh realities of human life and reconcile ourselves to our situation. But can the poet rely on the dreaming imagination to achieve this effect? This essay engages in a close reading of central passages from Hyperion, the Odes and ‘Bright Star’ in which Keats negotiates his competing notions of the poet as ‘a physician to all men’ and ‘a dreaming thing’.