Twentieth-century avant-gardism was short on discussions of formal beauty in high art. “Beauty,” itself, as a manifest aim in art, was mistrusted, and gamed against heavily. In a way and on a very salient level, this travesties the entire endeavor of major high art consonance, which must include, as a component aspect, the idea that formal beauty ranks high on imperative spreadsheets, no matter what other avant-garde imperatives ride alongside it. This game against formal beauty guaranteed that, in the twentieth century, the likes of William Blake— a comparative novice/amateur, whose worth as a higher artist is contained in a philosophical imperative and visionary stance puerile next to Keats’ Odal vision— could be given a higher ranking than Keats, who supersedes Blake at every point, both as formal technician and as poetic philosophe. What I would like to address here is specifically the issue of Keats’ prosody, his metrics, the formal beauty of his best poetry, as a political statement in and of itself, against society, against authority as well. In a certain way and on a certain level, formal beauty in high art is the ultimate statement of individuality against authority, and an ultimate statement (also) of rebellion.