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The central aim of this essay, anchored in the historical and intellectual experiences of John Keats, is that of demonstrating that negative capability - understood as the capacity to remain in uncertainty without hurriedly doing violence to facts and reason - may lie at the foundation of the poem itself: its beauty and truth. The truth of the poem, and thus of an authentic life, cannot be realized if not constantly accompanied by a sense of the beyond - a sense of the unknown toward which to aim, and which is therefore present. The presence in this essay of many authors who foretold of this beyond in a non-ideological way, from Virginia Woolf to Heidegger, demonstrates that the path toward the unknown is an isolated undertaking, but also one in common, where the commonality cuts across history and intersects with many thinkers. Keats - materialist, doctor, not as cultured as his fellow travelers - succeeds in discovering this ineffable quality (of negative experience) through his interior experience and causes it to spring up alive, a legacy for those who follow him. Among the latter, at the horizon's edge, one glimpses the outline of Bion.