When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be | John Keats

When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be

John Keats When I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high pil`d books, in charact'ry, Hold like rich garners the full-ripen'd grain; When I behold, upon the night's starr'd face, Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance, And feel that I may never live to trace Their shadows, with the magic hand of chance; And when I feel, fair creature of an hour! That I shall never look upon thee more, Never have relish in the faery power Of unreflecting love;—then on the shore Of the wide world I stand alone, and think, Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.

About the Poem

John Keats wrote this sonnet in January 1818, when he was twenty-two; it was published after his death. It follows the Shakespearean pattern of three quatrains and a couplet, and each quatrain opens with "When" or "And when", so the poem builds like one long held breath. The first quatrain fears dying before he has written all that is in his "teeming brain", the second fears never tracing the "huge cloudy symbols of a high romance", and the third turns to love. The release comes only in the last lines, where he stands alone "on the shore of the wide world" until love and fame "to nothingness do sink". Keats died of tuberculosis three years later, at twenty-five, which gives the poem much of its force for readers today.