By Faith Brammer

When I have fears that I may cease to be
   Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
   Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
   Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
And think 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.

— John Keats

As a young person, I’m constantly surrounded by the pressure of the future. The clock is constantly ticking counting down, reminding me of how little time I really have on this earth. There’s so much to see and so much to do, I feel overwhelmed by my ever growing list of things I want to accomplish before my last days. I remember reading “When I Have Fears that I May Cease To Be” for the first time in a college credit class my senior year of high school, when I was trying to figure out which direction I wanted to pursue with my life and having Keats’s words truly strike me.

Perhaps they strike every young English major with a burning desire to create something beautiful, something meaningful, that they will be remembered by. John Keats was a young man studying to be a doctor until one fateful day he decided to leave the study of medicine and pursue a career in poetry, which is a decision that is perhaps best not to be imitated. Keats had lofty literary ambitions, hoping to go down in history as one of the greats–Keats wanted to become a poetic god. Yet Keats was a sickly man, standing only 5’2 and suffering from a fragile constitution his entire life. Keats knew he wasn’t long for this earth, and much of his poetry reflects his preoccupation with his own death, as shown in “When I Have Fears that I May Cease To Be.”

Ambition, love, and death are major themes in the poem. The speaker of this poem wants to be remembered for greatness. However, he believes that he will die before he achieves his dreams, slipping from desire to despair. While it’s not a reliable practice to assume that the speaker of a poem is the author, it can safely be assumed that Keats is the melancholy, troubled speaker of this poem, as the speaker’s experience mirrors his own a great deal. Keats died from tuberculosis at age 25, diagnosed just a year earlier, before he had achieved much recognition as a poet–he wasn’t appreciated until after his passing. Just like the speaker in the poem, he lived his whole life in a state of haste, trying to learn and achieve as much as possible, worrying about what he was going to miss out on, including the day when he will no longer be able to look upon his beloved. Yet, that is not the truest tragedy for Keats. What he grapples with the most is that he will never be able to put these feelings of ecstasy, love, and desire for fame into words. When the speaker has these thoughts, he is overcome with a sense of loneliness, wondering if fame and love can even have any value in the face of death.

In the first section of the poem, the speaker compares his desire to fill books upon books with his thoughts and poetry to a farmer reaping and storing grain. He doesn’t want to go before his pen has “gleaned” (2) his teeming brain and books hold his thoughts like “fully ripened grain” (4). This figurative language paints a fertile image, as Keats’s poetry is both what is being grown and harvested.  However, what happens when you harvest wheat? It dies. Sure, you may still have the wheat, but it’s not the same as when it was a live plant growing in nature. Such is true for the speaker as well. Even if his words are preserved in books when he dies, it’s not the same as his active, alive mind. There is a large emphasis on “before,” as it’s mentioned in lines 2-3, evoking a sense of urgency, like time is running out.

Keats continues on with the nature imagery, evoking an image of a night sky. He personifies the night sky, looking up its face (5), reinforcing the idea that man and nature are one. He is looking upon a sky of “cloudy symbols” (6), which can be taken literally as clouds obscuring the night sky, or more figuratively, meaning the speaker has a lack of clarity or direction. What does it mean to “trace” them? Is Keats longing to reach out and touch his uncertain future? Does he see all that he could be, if he had more time in this world? Is he searching for something tangible, something to give him a sense of security that he won’t fade into the unknown? He sees those symbols of a high romance (6) and looks upon them with yearning. This high romance is no ordinary love. This is what is often referred to as chivalric love, the mystical stuff of legends. The sky is full of things the speaker will never have the chance to write about or express– He will never be able to trace their shadows with the “magic hand of chance” (8), or to experience love and life in their entirety.

The speaker then does dip into a more traditional definition of romance. It’s revealed that he is addressing his lover, who he calls the “fair creature of the hour,” (9) acknowledging that she is only temporary, just like everything else on earth. The fact that all the ruminations and yearnings that have been expressed in the previous two stanzas were directed at a lover make the poem more personal. Also, this is the first time the speaker is asking for more of something, not to complete something. Throughout the poem, the speaker is distressed at the prospect of not being able to finish his work or writings, but in this section he simply wants more of time with his lover–he wants no completion. Here the speaker’s tone begins to come down from its elevated heights and slip back into melancholy, realizing that he will never relish the “faery power of unreflecting love” (11-12) again. To reflect often means to ponder upon or attempt to make sense of something. So what is unreflecting love? It’s not logical and can’t be reasoned out—it’s raw emotion. The use of faery power implies something ethereal or of another world. Is the speaker implying that true passionate, unrelenting love doesn’t exist? Is it a myth, like faeries? Keats only gives us a cloudy idea.

The poem closes with the speaker alone on the “shore of the wide world” (13), another metaphor which represents his isolation from society. The speaker has spent a great deal of time reflecting upon his desires, but in this moment, he realizes how petty and insignificant they really are. The speaker’s dreams for fame and love have been drowned by the sea, and he knows there is nothing he can do to revive them. Gone is the urgency of the first quatrain, for the speaker has submitted himself to what he views as the inevitable. The speaker believes that he will never achieve the artistic greatness as he desires.

In respect to form, the poem is a Shakespearean sonnet. Shakespeare was one of Keats’s heroes and his sonnets tended to be about strong emotions like the want for immortality, so the reasoning behind this type of poem is clear. Keats desires his art’s immortality, but is unsure if he will reach that peak, unlike Shakespeare’s attitude towards his own work, making Keats’ choice of a Shakespearean sonnet somewhat ironic. Shakespearean sonnets contain three distinct quatrains and also often feature a turn, or change of tone– Keats’s turn comes at about line 12, when the speaker is isolated on the shore, moving from passionate to despairing and hopeless. The meter of the poem is iambic pentameter, giving the poem a rhythmic sense of control, despite the speaker feeling out of control. The enjambment throughout the poem forces the reader to move quickly from one line to the next, until lines 13-14, where the enjambment comes to a halt and a melancholy couplet closes the poem on a still, lonely note. When faced with such isolation and death, the speaker questions the true importance of such things—does pursuing such objectives even matter when you are faced with death? Is this Keats’s way of assuaging his fears—by deciding the things he’s pursuing are unimportant after all?

“When I Have Fears That I May Cease To Be” is a fraught and ambitious poem, just like Keats himself. Despite being written hundreds of years ago, its themes still ring true today. Perhaps to become a poetic god is not the goal of many people today, but to excel at your passion or art is common yearning–everyone suffers from the fear of not being good enough. So many young people find themselves overwhelmed with all the things they want to do and accomplish, yet feel constrained by circumstances and time. This ambition and passion can often lead to a form of despair when a person comes to terms with the fact that they won’t be able to achieve their desired goal. However, despite this poem’s melancholy end, it is truly an ironic work, because John Keats became one of the most famous poets of the English language years after his death and has been granted the immortality he so craved.