John Keats' famous poem, "When I Have Fears," directly
deals with knowledge of his impending death from tuberculosis (then called
"consumption"). It was a very contagious disease, which not only killed John's mother
and one of his brothers, but which would ultimately take his life before he turned
thirty.
Knowledge that his health was poor, and probably
aware that his life would be cut short, Keats pens this poem about all the things he
will miss by dying young. It is something that everyone can identify with in the sense
that everyone dies, and that there are always things we hope we can do, without the
guarantee that we will have the opportunity to do so, but his death will come much too
young, much too soon.
Keats knows that he will not have the
opportunity to write all that is in his "teeming brain" because there is so much there
and he has so little time...
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When I have fears that I may cease to
be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming
brain...
...before he can
read all the books piled next to him and enjoy the promise that each volume holds for
him...
Before
high-piled books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripen'd
grain...
Keats knows that he
will gaze at the stars that promise romance, which can never be
his...
When I
behold, upon the night's starr'd face,
Huge cloudy symbols of a high
romance,
And that opportunity
will not be his to imagine what new realms might come to him through "the magic hand of
chance"...
And
think that I may never live to trace
Their shadows, with the magic hand of
chance...
The time will
come—when death takes him—when he will no longer be able to see the sweet face of a
beautiful woman...
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And when I feel, fair creature of an
hour,
That I shall never look upon thee
more...
...or fall in love
and know the "faery" power of that love...
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Never have relish in the faery power
Of
unreflecting love;
...he
knows that on the shore of the world, he will stand alone, as all people do at the
doorstep of death, to think and wait until love and fame and all potential hopes and
dreams sink into "nothingness"...
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--then on the shore
Of the wide world I
stand alone, and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do
sink.
This poem is a sonnet
(fourteen lines with a fixed rhyme scheme) written in iambic pentameter (ten syllables
per line, with the stress on the second syllable/word in each of the five pairs). Often
authors using this format will use the ninth line to shift the focus of the poem, and
the sonnet's conclusion will be summarized in the rhyming
couplet.
However, while Keats uses this form, he does not
change the poem's focus at the ninth line: the message is very sad throughout the piece.
The rhyming couplet does not indicate that he has resolved his
fears.
He
sees himself as exiled, cut off from all human endeavor and love, a lone figure on a
forsaken shore, lost in thought. The inspired, feeling poet and lover has been
diminished into a thinker, assaulted by fears that transform “Love,” “Fame,” and even
self to “nothingness.”
He
knows he will die, but he does not resign himself to it: he finds no comfort with the
time he has left, or with the peace of religious thought, but sees himself pondering his
end until all is gone—as he is gone.
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