When I have fears that I may cease to be
By John Keats
Poem Analisys
English Poetry of the 19th – 20th C.
Paola Enguix Fernández
Gr. A
1.Introduction
In this paper I am going to talk about one of the most anguishing feeling someone can have; the fear of death. I will show what John Keats expresses in this poem, full of complaints for not having done all he had wanted to do, for being so young and think he will never have the opportunity to experience things such as love, and fame.
I will also explain why in the end, he accepts the unavoidable fate, but regreting not having lived his life more intensely.
John Keats wrote the sonnet When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be in 1817 and published it in 1818. This poem is an expression of Keats's melancholy, expresses concerns that run through his poetry and his letters -fame, love, and time - . Keats was conscious of needing time to write his poetry; when twenty-one, he wrote,
Oh, for ten years that I may overwhelm
Myself in poesy.
By age twenty-four -only three years later - , he had essentially stopped writing because of ill health. There were times he felt confident that his poetry would survive him, "I think I shall be among the English Poets after my death." Nevertheless, the inscription he wrote for his headstone was,
"Here lies one whose name was writ in water."
2.The poem: ‘When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be’
When I Have Fears that I May Cease to Be
By John Keats.
When I have fears that I may cease to be
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
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 feel 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.
3.Analysis of the poem
3.1.Title
When I have Fears that I may Cease to Be– This title is quiteexplicative by itself; the author, Keats, fears the moment when he will die, but amongst the death what he fears most is what he would leave behind: love and fame.
3.2.Theme
Its broad theme is fear--fear of not finding true love and fear of untimely "ceasing to be." This is not exactly death in the conventional sense; Keats had a gorgeous way of depicting death as a dissolving of sorts, a melting away from the world unseen, only to end up in a "low grass tomb." He was the proverbial stranger always in his poems - his identity constantly threatened by a quaking sense of despair that seemed to follow him everywhere - even if it was waiting silently around the corner from delight. This is the gist of the sonnet's overall theme. He, at the age of 22, was already feeling this perpetual ache - for love, literary recognition and later death - and longing. It dogged his existence constantly. This sonnet marks that lurid feeling's beginning and derivation.
3.3.Structure
The fourteen-line poem in iambic pentameter takes the form of a Shakespearean or Elizabethan Sonnet, which follows a standardized rhyme scheme, and consists of three quatrains and a couplet. In the sonnet, the speaker first discusses three things that he is concerned with missing in life.
3.3.1.First Quatrain
In the first quatrain, the speaker describes his fear of dying before being able to glean his "teeming brain" of all the poetry within it.
3.3.2.Second Quatrain
The second quatrain continues the same theme, using a metaphor of tracing the shadows of clouds to describe his fear of dying before writing great poetry.
3.3.3.Third Quatrain
In the third quatrain, he talks about his fears of death robbing him of his love, the "fair creature of an hour". This is believed to have been Keats' fiancé, whom he was secretly engaged to.
3.3.4.Couplet
In the final couplet of the poem, the speaker tells the reader that upon considering these fears, he realizes that in the end the fact is simply that he is going to die, and all of these other things- fame, poetry, greatness and love, "to nothingness do sink"- in other words, they become worthless to him if he is going to die anyway. Also in the final couplet Keats says “then on the shore of the wide world,” which suggests that Keats is on the edge between life and death, because at the time he knew he would soon die.
3.4.Style
This poem is written as a liric poetry, which means that it is a short poem with one speaker - not necessarily the poet - who expresses thought and feeling.The emotion is or seems personal In classical Greece, the lyric was a poem written to be sung, accompanied by a lyre. Though it is more often applied to Odes, here is used for a Sonnet. A sonnet isa lyric poem consisting of fourteen lines. In English, generally the two basic kinds of sonnets are the Italian or Petrarchan sonnet and the Shakespearean or Elizabethan sonnet. Keats has written a Shakespearean sonnet, that consists of three quatrains - four lines each - and a concluding couplet - two lines - .
The meter of this poem is Iambic, which means a foot consisting of an unaccented and accented syllable. Shakespeare often uses iambic, for example the beginning of Hamlet's speech - the accented syllables are italicized - , "To be or not to be. Listen for the accents in this line from Marlowe, "Come live with me and be my love." English seems to fall naturally into iambic patterns, for it is the most common meter in English.
3.4.1.Communicative Structure
The text is written in 1st person - When I have fears ... - Before my pen ... my teeming brain ... But it is not clear if he is adressing to the reader, or if it is a private confession of his inner feelings, his deepest fears; Keats expresses his fear of dying young in the first thought unit, lines 1-12. He fears that he will not fulfill himself as a writer;
Before my pen has glean'd my teeming brain,
Before high-piled books, in charact'ry,
and that he will lose his beloved;
That I shall never look upon thee more,
Never have relish in the faery power
Of unreflecting love
Nevertheless, as a inner thought he changes his mind as he writes, and concludes resolving his fears by asserting the unimportance of love and fame in the concluding two and a half lines of this sonnet:
Of the wide world I stand alone, and think,
Till Love and Fame to nothingness do sink.
We have here an intimate poem, from the core of the poet, adressed to anyone in particular but to which people can emphatize.
3.4.2.Cohesion
Keats does not use very much coordinated structures in his poem; the conjunction “and” only appears in lines 7 and 9, meanwhile juxtaposition by commas and semicolons are used throught out the text in almost every line to pause and emphasize the tragical feeling. Lines 1, 7, 9, 11, and 12 are the only ones which do not have a comma or semicolon at the end; and in all the poem there is only one full stop, at the end of line 14. Subordination is also present in this poem, mainly represented by “when” in lines 1 and 5, and “then” in line 12. He uses direct speech in order to create an intimate atmosphere and a relaxed climax with the reader, as anguished as the poem is.
3.4.3.Lexis and Semantics
Line 2. glean: in this poem, Keats is using the meaning of collecting patiently or picking out laboriously.
teeming: plentiful, overflowing, or produced in large quantities.
Line 3. charactery: printing or handwriting.
Line 4. garners: granaries or storehouses for grain.
Line 6.high romance: high = of an elevated or exalted character or quality; romance = medieval narrative of chivalry, also an idealistic fiction which tends not to be realistic.
3.4.4.Rhythm and Rhyme
This poem has the classical pattern in rhyme: A, B, A, B... in the 3 quartets, until the couplet which rhymes A, A. It’s a End Rhyme, the most common amongst the rhytmic patterns, and which occurs at the end of two or more lines. It is a true rhyme; the sounds are nearly identical:
B - ... my teeming brain,
A
B - ... full-ripen'd grain;
A - ... and think,
A - ... do sink.
Except in the 1st and 3rd lines where we have a weak rhyme, also called slant, oblique, approximate, or half rhyme, that refers to words with similar but not identical sounds:
A - ... cease to be
B
A - ... in charact'ry
In the first quatrain we find the imagery of the harvest, e.g., "glean'd," "garners," "full ripen'd grain." He reinforces this idea with the alliteration - repetition of the same sound at the beginning of a word to emphasize - of the key words "glean'd," garners," and "grain," as well as the repetition of “r” sounds in "charactery," "rich," "garners,"ripen'd," and "grain.". A harvest means his fulfillment in time, the culmination which yields a valued product, reflected in the grain being "full ripen'd." Abundance is also apparent in the adjectives "high-piled" and "rich." The harvest metaphor contains a paradox - a statement whose two parts seem contradictory yet make sense with more thought to attract the reader’s attention and gives emphasis -, very characteristic in Keats's poetry: Keats is both the field of grain - his imagination is like the grain to be harvested - and he is the harvester - writer of poetry - .
In the next quatrain he sees the world as full of material - the beauty of nature "night's starr'd face” – line 5 - and the larger meanings he perceives beneath the appearance of nature or physical phenomena "Huge cloudy symbols" – line 6 - - that he could transform into poetry – with "the magic hand” – line 8 - .
In the third quatrain he turns to love. As the "fair creature of an hour," – line 9 - his beloved is short-lived just as, by implication, love is. The quatrain itself parallels the idea of little time, in being only three and a half lines, rather than the usual four lines of a Shakespearean sonnet; the effect in reading is of a slight speeding-up of time. How important is love compared to poetry for Keats in this poem? Does the fact that he devotes fewer lines to love than to poetry suggest anything about their relative importance to him? Does this lines have too much feeling within them to make the reader experience the loss as much or more than if they were more?
The poet's concern with time, which is not enough time to fulfill his poetic gift and love, is supported by the repetition of "when" at the beginning of each quatrain and by the shortening of the third quatrain. Keats attributes two qualities to love: it has the ability to transform the world for the lovers "faery power" – line 11 - , and involves us with emotion rather than thought: "I feel" – line 9 - and "unreflecting love" – line 12 - .
4.Comment on When I Have Fears the I May Cease to Be’
I have chosen this poem because whenever I read it the sense of angst and despair is present, gazing at the dark shadow of death, waiting patiently for the final victory, that owns for the eternal times. And no matter what you do, no matter how hard you try, death is capricious, and only if destiny provides, you will have time enough to love and achieve recognition.
5. Conclusion
Keats can be interpreted throught this poem as the poet of melancholy that convined sensuality and fear; As we read we are focused on his vivid, concrete imagery; on his portrayal of the passionate; and on his immersion in the here and now. He can be praised for his seriousness and thoughfulness, for his dealing with difficult human conflicts, and for his impassioned mental pursuit of truth. Keats's important poems are related to, or grow directly out of inner conflicts. Keats often associated love and pain both in his life and in his poetry.
In this poem we have the perfect example of the romantic poet; a tortured soul, fearing the unavoidable, praying for more time to show what he would be able to. Wishing the impossible. Seeking for a chance to love.
6.Bibliography
Wikipedia, The free encyclopedia. This page was last modified 14:28, 11 November 2006.
John Keats Home page - © 2000 Thilo v. Pape
BBC Home, Arts, Romantics. 27 November 2006
Introduction to John Keats – Lilia Melani () Form Brooklyn College, University of N.Y.(
)
This page was last modified on Friday, August 27, 2004.
This page was last modified on Monday, February 25, 2002.
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