When I Have Fears
When I Have Fears - meaning Summary
Fear of Unfulfilled Life
Keats’s sonnet presents a speaker confronting the fear of dying young and leaving his creative and emotional life incomplete. He imagines unrealized poems, books, and a high romance he will never record, and mourns the prospect of losing the immediate experience of love. Standing metaphorically on the world’s shore, he reflects until the ambitions of fame and the intensity of love seem to recede into nothingness.
Read Complete AnalysesWhen I have fears that I may cease to be Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain, Before high-piled books, in charactery, 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 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.
Feel free to be first to leave comment.