1When I have fears that I may cease to be
2 Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
3Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
4 Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
5When I behold, upon the night’s starred face,
6 Huge cloudy symbols of a high romance,
7And think that I may never live to trace
8 Their shadows with the magic hand of chance;
9And when I feel, fair creature of an hour,
10 That I shall never look upon thee more,
11Never have relish in the faery power
12 Of unreflecting love—then on the shore
13Of the wide world I stand alone, and think
14Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to be" is an Elizabethan (a.k.a. Shakespearean) sonnet written by John Keats in 1818, although it wasn't published until 1848, which was twenty-seven years after the poet's death. A lyric poem (in the sense that it expresses personal or intimate feelings), the poem centers on a speaker's anxiety about dying before being able to achieve his or her aspirations as a poet. What makes the poem especially tragic and moving is that Keats died of tuberculosis only three years after writing it, at the young age of 25.
The speaker at times worries about dying before he or she has turned all the thoughts in his or her busy mind into poetry, before the speaker has filled stacks of books with these thoughts in the same way that a farmer would fill storehouses with harvested grain. At times the speaker looks up into the starry night sky and sees vast images of elevated (perhaps chivalrous) love there. The speaker worries about not living long enough to get the chance to translate these symbols into poetry. At times the speaker fears being unable to look upon his or her beautiful beloved, and of no longer being able to enjoy the transformative power of love. When the speaker considers these fears, the speaker feels isolated, as if standing all alone on a vast seashore. In such moments, the speaker feels as if love and fame do not matter, or perhaps are impossible in the face of death.
As suggested by the title, the speaker in “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be” considers mortality and the possibility that death may come before the speaker has achieved all he or she hopes to in life. In particular, the speaker views death as isolating, and though creative endeavors and personal relationships can offer a momentary balm against the speaker’s anxiety about dying, the speaker knows these are also the very things that will be lost in death. Ultimately, the speaker seems to accept the inevitability of death—though it's unclear if, in doing so, the speaker accepts the futility of fearing death or accepts the futility of life itself.
The speaker specifically struggles with the concept of fate and the possibility that death is outside of the speaker’s control. When the speaker imagines “trac[ing]” symbols from the sky “with the magic hand of chance,” this suggests on the one hand that, if granted the opportunity, the speaker would be able to effectively “trace” the sky into poetry. However, these lines could also suggest that the speaker may not “live long enough to trace / Their shadows” as a result of the “magic hand of chance,” i.e. the whims of fate. In either case, the speaker is clearly concerned with the idea of “chance” and struggles with the notion that the achievements of his or her life may depend on randomness. Fear of death, it seems, is intimately linked to a desire for control.
The speaker also fears death’s isolating nature and attempts to come to grips with the reality that he or she is alone in the face of mortality. Note how, in lines 9 and 10, it becomes clear that one of the main anxieties produced by the thought of death is the possibility that the speaker “may never look upon [his or her beloved] more.” Part of the speaker’s fear of death thus stems from the fact that he or she will lose the personal relationships that have come to give the speaker solace in life. Indeed, the speaker seems to view death as a particularly lonely experience: when the speaker thinks of it, he or she feels as though “on the shore / Of the wide world I stand alone.” The very thought of death makes the speaker feel isolated from the entire world, just as dying will literally separate the speaker from the “wide world.”
Because death is inevitable and isolating, love and fame seem empty aspirations to the speaker. No matter how much the speaker might yearn for or find comfort in the love of others or in the possibility of fame, death will come to each person “alone.” Thus, “love and fame to nothingness do sink.” This final line can be read several ways. It may imply that the speaker realizes that love and fame are impossible, because he or she will either die before attaining them or will attain them only to lose them in death anyways. However, the ending may also suggest that in accepting the certainty of death, the speaker actually overcomes his or her fears of losing out on love and fame by acknowledging their loss as inevitable. In such a case, the speaker may actually move beyond concerns for love and fame, realizing that there is no reason to worry about them.
The speaker of “When I have Fears that I May Cease to Be” is not merely concerned with being dead, but with the possibility of not being alive—and therefore losing the opportunity to experience the creative possibilities of the world. In essence, the speaker seems to believe that creative (and specifically poetic) accomplishments are the main point of life. It's clear, then, that the speaker is a very ambitious person, and particularly fears dying before achieving all he or she hopes to as a poet.
Note how the speaker repeatedly uses the word “before” to frame his or her fears: the speaker fears dying “Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain, / “Before high-pilèd books, in charactery / Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain.” In other words, there is a specific act—namely, the writing of poetry—which the speaker fears not achieving before dying. The speaker does not merely lament no longer being able to look “upon the night’s starred face,” but not being able to “trace / Their shadows”—that is, to translate what the speaker sees in the sky into poetry. Because the central aim of the speaker’s life seems to be artistic creation, it is death’s prevention of this aim that the poet most fears.
The speaker views his or her imagination as particularly productive and capable of achieving impressive poetic feats—making the potential for wasted ambition all the greater. The speaker uses language evoking fertility and fruitfulness to describe the poetic possibilities that exist in his or her mind—for example, likening a pen to a scythe that can “[glean the speaker’s] teeming brain.” The speaker’s “brain” is like farmland ready to be harvested, and the speaker’s pen is the device to reap the crops of the speaker’s mind. The harvest metaphor continues as the speaker describes the books that he or she would write like storehouses for the “ripened grain” gleaned from his or her imagination. Death would thus cause the speaker’s “teeming” poetic life to go to waste, like rotten fruit or untended crops.
Indeed, the speaker feels quite capable of very lofty achievements. When the speaker looks into the sky, he or she “behold[s] … Huge cloud symbols of a high romance.” This image implies the speaker’s ambitiousness through a focus on large, abstract ideas. However, the phrase “high romance” may also more literally refer to a “romance” poem or long, metered narrative poem that is often recognized as the most important accomplishment of a poet’s career. Thus, the speaker seems confident enough in his or her ambitions to be able to write a “high romance” if given the opportunity—to create great art, if only granted the time to do so.
Throughout the poem, the speaker relies on descriptions of the natural world to explain his or her poetic ambitions. In doing so, the speaker suggests that nature is the source of ultimate artistic inspiration and that poetry is a means to capture and share natural beauty. For example, the speaker describes seeing “upon the night’s starred face / huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” which he or she hopes to “trace.” In other words, the speaker describes a natural phenomenon—the starry night sky—as being a creative catalyst.
Although the ideas in these lines become a bit abstracted, referring to “symbols” of “romance,” the speaker still roots them in the natural imagery of clouds and stars. The speaker even personifies the night into a “face,” likening the beauty of the night to the beauty of another person—further underscoring the link between nature and beauty, as well as the that between beauty and creative inspiration.
The speaker also draws on natural imagery when describing his or her own imagination. The speaker envisions the books that might eventually contain his or her poetry to be like granaries storing “rich garners” of “full ripened grain.” This image of “rich … ripened grain” gives the speaker’s art a beautiful, indulgent quality, evoking ample fields of golden wheat and again linking poetry to nature.
Specifically, the speaker views poetry as an attempt to capture or translate this beauty. Having likened the “high-pilèd books” that the speaker hopes to write to granaries or grain storehouses, the speaker likens a “pen” to a harvesting tool. This farming metaphor suggests that the speaker sees poetry as a tool that is capable of reaping the fruit of the natural world and making it digestible.
Indeed, when the speaker describes seeing “huge cloudy symbols of a high romance” in the night sky, the speaker yearns “to trace / Their shadows,” implying that poetry could recreate the beauty of the sky much like a drawing. However, this image also seems to demonstrate humility, in that the speaker may not be able to trace the actual symbols, but only “their shadows.” In other words, poetry can strive to capture the beauty of the natural world, but may only ever successfully trace its outline.
Towards the end of the poem it becomes clear that the speaker is afraid of losing love upon dying. Whereas the idea of love in the poem initially centers on the speaker’s wish for romantic love, it expands to reflect the speaker’s wish for widespread admiration and fame. The speaker thus not only fears dying before fulfilling his or her creative potential, but also before gaining recognition for doing so.
The speaker seems to experience a particular urgency of time in regard to his or her beloved. The speaker first refers to his or her loved one as “fair creature of an hour,” immediately connecting the figure of his love with a concept of time. By calling this beloved a “creature of an hour,” the speaker seems to imply the brevity of that experience of love, as if that love is as short-lived as a single hour. Indeed, love seems more closely tied to timing than any of the speaker’s other concerns throughout the poem. The speaker specifically fears, “That I shall never look upon thee more.” To merely look upon this love is not enough—the speaker craves “more” time to do so. This is not the case with other concerns of the poem, in which the speaker merely hopes to live long enough to accomplish certain deeds. With love, it seems, there is no point at which the experience will be completed—there is no time that would be enough to satisfy that wish for “more.”
In fact, the very section of the poem devoted to love is truncated. An Elizabethan sonnet is normally divided into three quatrains and a couplet. In “When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be,” the form is followed for the first two quatrains. However, the third quatrain on love is actually three and a half lines instead of four. The final couplet cuts into the last line of the quatrain, making the speaker’s meditation on love literally run out of time formally.
However, the final lines suggest that it is not merely the speaker’s love for another, but others’ love for the speaker that the speaker is most afraid of losing. At the end of the third quatrain, in lines 11 and 12, the speaker notes the fear of never relishing in the “power / Of unreflecting love.” “Unreflecting love” complicates the speaker's account of love, at it seems to suggest the object of the speaker’s love does not necessarily reciprocate that emotion. In fact, part of the reason the speaker wishes to have “more” time to look upon his or her beloved may be in order to overcome unrequited love and make that person love the speaker back.
When next the speaker discusses love, in the final lines, it takes on even more significant implications. In fact, the speaker specifically ends on the image of “love and fame” sinking to nothingness in death. This juxtaposition of love and fame suggests that the speaker finds a connection between the two and may be motivated both by romantic love and by celebrity. This urge for recognition complicates the entire poem, connecting the speaker’s wish for love to his or her creative ambitions rather than a more romantic ideal. Indeed, it is possible to read the final lines as an indication that the speaker wants not only to accomplish all he or she can as a poet, but to be recognized and loved for those accomplishments.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain,
The opening lines of "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" establish the poem's primary thematic concerns: the fear of death and the cutting short of creative potential.
In the first line, the speaker describes moments when he or she fears dying. The line is enjambed, spilling over on to the next line and quickly establishing a sense of anxiety—of the thoughts in the speaker's mind surging forward of their own accord.
The second line is a continuation of the same sentence, and reveals that the speaker does not merely fear "ceas[ing] to be" but dying "Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain" (emphasis added). In other words, it is not only a fear of death itself that fills the speaker, but a fear of dying before achieving something creative. In fact, the wording "cease to be" is significant, in that the speaker does not fear death itself, but a lack of life, and the possibilities therein.
Specifically, the concern over dying before the speaker's "pen has gleaned [his or her] teeming brain" implies that the speaker's primary interest is writing. The line features metaphor, describing the image of a pen gleaning the speaker's mind. Such an image likens a pen to a scythe, a tool uses to harvest crops. The metaphor suggests that the speaker wishes to harvest the crops of his or her "teeming brain," or, more literally, write down the speaker's many thoughts. The metaphor is especially complex in that the speaker is both the harvester and thing harvested.
Each line also begins with a word related to time: "When" and "Before." By placing these words at the start of each line, our attention is drawn to the temporal aspect of the poem, and gives rise to a sense of urgency in the speaker's fears. "When" suggests that the speaker has fears of dying on a regular basis, while "before" suggests that that particular fear revolves around dying too soon.
Furthermore, the lines rely on assonance, or the repetition of internal vowel sounds. "Fears," "cease," "be," 'before," "gleaned," and "teeming" each feature /ee/ sounds. Because the sound first appears in the word "fear," however, the sound's continued prevalence throughout the lines embodies the prevalence of the speaker's fear, making the word "fear" feel present in the poem even when it isn't directly.
Lastly, these lines establish the poem's meter. Written primarily in iambic pentameter, each of these lines features five perfect iambs, or unstressed-stressed beats, that add up to ten syllables. For example:
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Such perfect meter gives the impression of control, as if the speaker is able to tame his or her fear of death. Additionally, such meter was a common feature of Elizabethan sonnets, and may act as the speaker's method of gesturing toward other past writers, such as Shakespeare. Doing so might link the speaker's interest in writing with the great writing of other literary figures.
Before high-pilèd books, in charactery,
Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain;
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Get LitCharts A+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
and think
Till love and fame to nothingness do sink.
The shore embodies the isolation, disconnection, and uncertainty of death. On the shore, one is separated from the rest of the world by the vast sea. Indeed, the shore itself is an ending, the place where land runs out, a physical symbol for the end of life. Furthermore, when standing on the shore one beholds the ocean, a vast, mysterious body of water. This is much like standing at the end of life and looking toward the mysterious, impenetrable reality of death. As one sinks into the ocean, they sink into death, and the last moment of life thus occurs on the shoreline.
The pen symbolizes poetry and art. It is the tool used to write and to "trace" the beauty of the world that inspires the speaker, and thus to the speaker is a symbol of poetry and poetic ability itself. At first, the pen is related to a scythe or harvesting tool, suggesting it is capable of reaping the creative possibilities of the world. Later, the speaker describes "tracing" symbols in the night sky, now likening a pen to a drawing tool, creating a larger connecting between poetry and art in general. The act of poetry, symbolized in the use of a pen to "glean" the speaker's "brain" and "trace" the world's beauty, is the speaker's primary motivation in life, and thus the pen is his or her central tool.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" begins with an extended metaphor that relates the act of harvesting to writing poetry. In lines 2-4, the speaker describes a fear of dying "Before my pen has gleaned my teeming brain," and before "books ... Hold like rich garners the full ripened grain." In this case, the speaker implicitly aligns a "pen" with a tool capable of gleaning, or reaping, the grain from a harvest. Furthermore, the "pen" is gleaning the speaker's "teeming brain," which implies that the speaker's brain is the metaphorical farmland that the pen must harvest. In a more literal sense, this means the speaker feels that his or her imagination is full of thoughts that can be written down, presumably in the form of poetry. Thus, the speaker fears dying before reaping the crops of his or her poetic imagination.
The metaphor goes on to describe "high-pilèd books" that "[h]old like rich garners the full ripened grain." This internal simile that likens books to granaries or storehouses emphasizes the role of writing or poetry in the speaker's ambitions. It is not merely dying that the speaker fears, but being unable to harvest his or her imagination and store the yielded crops in books—in other words, being unable to create numerous works of poetry. The use of words like "rich" and "ripened" to describe this metaphor promotes the notion that the speaker's imagination is fertile and vivid. In sum, the metaphor of harvesting large volumes of "ripened grain" demonstrates the speaker's confidence as a poet.
The metaphor is especially complicated, however, in that it suggests that the speaker views his or her mind as fruitful while also positioning the speaker as the agent of his or her own harvesting. That is, the speaker is both the harvester of the various thoughts/poems in the speaker's mind and the thing being harvested. This seems to imply a self-sufficiency or individual capacity on the speaker's part, demonstrating that the speaker feels able to achieve his or her ambitions if only granted the time.
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Get LitCharts A+Select any word below to get its definition in the context of the poem. The words are listed in the order in which they appear in the poem.
To bring or come to an end. In this case, the speaker worries about life coming to an end.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" is a Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet—a 14-line poem that typically has a rhyme scheme, ten-syllables lines, and a volta (or "turn"), which is a dramatic shift in thought or emotion. In a Shakespearean sonnet, the volta always comes after the twelfth line. Additionally, the first twelve lines of a Shakespearean sonnet are typically divided into three quatrains of distinct subject matter, ending with a rhyming couplet.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" follows many of these formal rules, with a few notable exceptions. As is usual for a Shakespearean sonnet, the poem is primarily written in iambic pentameter. It also has three distinct quatrains: lines 1-4 centered on the harvest metaphor, lines 5-8 on the contemplation of the night sky, and lines 9-12 on love. However, the form is slightly disrupted in the third quatrain, which ends halfway through line 12 rather than at the end. This shortening of the third quatrain gives the lines on love a particular urgency, suggesting that time is running out both for the speaker's love and for the poem. Thus, the final couplet is actually two and a half lines, instead of two.
This disruption also causes the volta to occur half a line early, in line 12 instead of 13. The entire poem constructs a number of unfinished "When" clauses, which finally resolve with, "Then on the shore / Of the wide world I stand alone." Thus, though the speaker has lofty ambitions of creating poetry and relishing in love, the speaker's fears are ultimately isolating, and he or she accepts in the poem's final lines the inevitability of death. The fact that the volta spills into line 12 may serve to further the powerful sway death holds over the speaker, causing him or her to lose control of formal perfection.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" is written primarily in iambic pentameter, or ten-syllable lines with five beats of unstressed-stressed syllables. For example, take line 1:
When I | have | fears | that I | may cease | to be
This meter gives the poem a sense of control and perfection. The speaker, indeed, spends large portions of the poem discussing poetic ambitions and grand abilities, and the careful metrical craft seems to promote the idea that the speaker is a very capable poet.
There are notable shifts in the meter, however. The first occurs in line 4:
Hold like | rich garn- | ers the | full rip | ened grain;
The opening trochee (stressed-unstressed) followed by a spondee (stressed-stressed) creates an immediate sense of confidence. This line actually has six stresses instead of five, reflecting the speaker's assuredness in just how rich and full his or her mind is with poetry.
Another important change happens in line 11, when the first foot switches from an iamb to a dactyl (stressed-unstressed-unstressed) (or perhaps a trochee, depending on how you read it). This line also has an extra syllable that creates a feminine (unstressed) ending. We can scan it as dactyl, trochee, iamb, iamb:
Never have | relish in | the faer- | y power
Or trochee, iamb, pyrrhic (unstressed-unstressed), iamb, iamb:
Never | have rel- | ish in | the faer- | y power
In any case, this flipping of the stresses may serve to be a metrical example of the "faery power" of love, or its transformative ability. Just as it has power of the speaker, so too does it have power over the meter, causing it to break its pattern.
Another notable shift in meter occurs in line 13, when the first two feet of the line can be read as another pyrrhic followed by a spondee:
Of the | wide world
This altered metered also places emphasis on the "wide" nature of the world, doubling the feeling of vastness that surrounds that speaker and thus makes him or her feel especially alone in the face of death. Lastly, this altered meter suggests the speaker is slightly losing control of his or her craft and mastery of poetry in the face of death.
The rhyme scheme follows the typical scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet:
ABAB CDCD EFEF GG.
In this scheme, each quatrain has distinct rhymes that do not carry into subsequent quatrains, and the final couplet stands on its own as a double rhyme. This creates a sense of internal unity between quatrains, as the lines 1-4 on harvesting, for example, are unified by distinct rhymes, while the next section on the night sky in lines 5-8 has new rhymes.
Additionally, the rhymes throughout "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" are always perfect (e.g., "brain" / "grain" , "face" / "trace"), adding to a sense of formal mastery in the poem. This contributes to the sense that the speaker is a capable poet who is also well-versed in poetic traditions.
The speaker of the poem is anonymous and genderless, though critics and historians often assume the speaker to be Keats himself, who struggled with a fear of death and did, ultimately, die young. Indeed, the speaker of the poem is apparently a poet, who laments dying before achieving certain poetic goals. The speaker seems to be confident in his or her poetic abilities, believing that, if granted time, the speaker will accomplish many creative goals. The speaker is also apparently in love, as he or she addresses an unnamed lover. Furthermore, the speaker seems to be young, as he or she seems to see a long life of poetic accomplishment ahead that may be truncated by death.
As the poem progresses the speaker's poetic ambitions and wish for love gain new implications, as the speaker reveals it is not merely the acts of writing and loving that motivates him or her, but the reception of "love and fame," or recognition, for the speaker's work. Thus, we come to see the speaker's ambition is partially motivated by a wish for celebrity, which could be interpreted as more superficial or vain than the lofty goals articulated in earlier lines.
The setting of the poem is unclear. In fact, the poem could be said to exist purely in the speaker's mind. Although the speaker describes the natural world, and expresses the feeling of standing alone on the shore in the end, the speaker does not literally occupy these places, but rather considers them in his or her mind. Thus, the entire poem could be read as the speaker's thought process, making the actual setting vague and the poem's themes applicable to a variety of circumstances.
John Keats was one of the central voices of the British Romanticism, a branch of a school of literature that emerged in Europe toward the end of the 18th century and carried through the first half of the 19th. Romanticism rejected the notions of rationalism and reason that had been dominant since the Enlightenment, and instead focused on emotion and subjectivity. This was evident especially in the proliferation of lyric poetry, a form of generally short, first-person expressions of intense emotion and thoughts. Some important purveyors of Romantic lyric poetry included Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in Germany and Percy Bysshe Shelley and William Wordsworth in England. The latter especially helped promote the revival of the sonnet in England, a form that Keats frequently used.
"When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" thus embodied many of these trends: a lyric sonnet, it expresses a speaker's profound fear of death and loss of love. The poem is strongly self-conscious and subjective as well as intensely felt, serving primarily to transmit the speaker's anxieties and despairs over his or her own death.
Beyond the Romantic era, however, Keats was also massively influenced by William Shakespeare. Indeed, "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" is written in a Shakespearean sonnet form, and critics have often drawn connections between it and Shakespeare's sonnets 60 and 64, each of which deals with issues of time, death, and loss. While Keats was clearly influenced by and may have been paying homage to Shakespeare, there may be an even larger reason Keats chose this form: by writing a Shakespearean sonnet about having grand poetic ambitions, Keats may have actually been aligning himself with Shakespeare, suggesting that, if granted the time, he would be able to write poems as magnificently and legendary as Shakespeare himself.
Keats lived during the peak of the Industrial Revolution in England, when factors like poverty and urbanization were contributing to mass health crises. In particular, the conditions of urban life in England were prime for the spread of tuberculosis. According to the BMJ, by the early 19th century one in four deaths in England were due to TB.
Keats' mother died of TB when he was young, and his brother later died of the same cause. At the time, people believed TB was genetic and not a contagious disease (this wasn't discovered until 1882), so Keats grew up with a profound fear of TB and awareness that he was likely to die of it in a matter of time, just like his family members. This fear suffuses "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be," since Keats not only feared dying young but seemed to know that it would happen. Tragically, he was right: he died of TB at the young age of 25.
Reading of "When I have Fears" — A dramatic reading of "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be."
Keats's Encyclopedia Entry — An Encyclopedia.com entry on "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be."
Academic Analysis of "When I have Fears" — A short exploration of "When I have Fears That I May Cease to Be" from CUNY Brooklyn.
Keats's Love Letters — Selected love letters from Keats to Fanny Brawne, who many believe is the "fair creature" in the poem.
Discussion of "When I have Fears" — A video from Providence eLearning discussing the background and giving an analysis of Keats's poem.