Keats was the youngest of the second generation of Romantics. And it is remarkable to consider that had he lived even to middle age, he would have been a Victorian. In this context it begins to be understandable why his reputation as a poet was not substantial until the following generation. His synaesthesia, luxuriousness, and remarkable condensation were too advanced even for the other poets of his time. Byron, whose poetic style was formed by reading Pope and Gray, complained to Leigh Hunt that he could not understand the meaning of ‘a beaker full of the warm south.’

I remember my own reaction to reading that line for the first time: I was absolutely astonished. It was one of the lines that made me recognize how expressive a single line of poetry could be, how much it could contain. For the most popular contemporary of Keats, the line was merely a puzzle.