When I Have Fears That I May Cease to Be
John Keats, 1818
Keats’s sonnet on his fear that he may die before he has written all that is in him or known love to the full.
When I have fears that I may cease to beBefore my pen has glean’d my teeming brain,Before high pilèd books, in charactry,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 traceTheir 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 powerOf unreflecting love;—then on the shoreOf the wide world I stand alone, and thinkTill Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.